|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
An Alabama House of Representatives version of the Laken Riley Act was approved by a Senate committee Wednesday.
House Bill 7, sponsored by state Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, would allow state and local law enforcement to enter voluntary agreements with the federal government to enforce federal immigration laws.
HB7 was given a favorable report by the Alabama Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill would allow state and local law enforcement to enter agreements with the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Homeland Security, alongside any other federal agency to support, “the detention, removal, and investigation of illegal aliens and the immigration status of any person in this state.”
The bill also allows state and local government employees to maintain information on the immigration status of any individual, transport undocumented immigrants into the custody of the federal government and arrest individuals suspected of being an undocumented immigrant if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Law Enforcement Support Center provide written instructions for their detention.
HB7 would require state, county and local jails to prepare a report on their total number of inmates, including the total number of foreign national inmates, to be posted online at least quarterly.
Also included in the report would be the total number of inquiries made to federal agencies regarding an inmate’s immigration status and the agencies’ responses, as well the number of immigration detainers issued by ICE.
An amendment to HB7, presented by state Sen. Sam Givhan, R-Huntsville, was approved by the committee in order to allow counties without a website to post their quarterly inmate reports through any other form of public communication, such as a public bulletin board.
In January, a federal version of the Laken Riley Act, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., became the first piece of legislation signed into law by President Donald Trump during his second term. The bill requires DHS to detain undocumented immigrants for theft and violent crimes.
Georgia also passed a version of the bill in July 2024: the Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act of 2024. Yarbrough said his version of the bill was modeled after the Georgia legislation.
“It actually pre-dates Senator Britt’s more famous legislation. It actually was passed out of Georgia last year. That’s how it came to my attention,” Yarbrough said of the history of HB7.
“This bill is voluntary. If [state or local law enforcement] want to, if they see the need to partner with the federal government to help,” Yarbrough said.
“I, on my phone, have got several instances—10, 20 instances in Alabama from recent days of heinous crimes committed in different communities by illegal immigrants who were gang members and so forth. So, it would help facilitate stopping that,” he claimed.
Yarbrough did not share more information regarding these examples with the committee.
State Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, voted against the bill, expressing hesitation in light of controversies surrounding the due process of several deportations authorized by the Trump administration.
“I just have so much apprehension about voting on any of these immigration bills these days in light of what’s going on on the federal level,” Figures said.
Figures pointed to the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old man from El Salvador deported after being accused of being a member of the transnational Salvadorian gang, MS-13.
Garcia was detained in Hyattsville, Maryland in 2019 after police officers said he and three others were loitering in a Home Depot parking lot. Law enforcement claimed the Chicago Bulls hat Abrego was wearing and a tip from an unidentified informant indicated his membership in MS-13.
While Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally in 2012, he was released in 2019 under a withholding of removal order, preventing the U.S. government from sending him back to El Salvador due to potential to face harm by El Salvadorian gang, Barrio-18.
Despite the order, Garcia was arrested again and deported in March 2025.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis and the U.S. Supreme Court have ordered the federal government to facilitate Garcia’s return.
U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement officials have also called Garcia’s deportation an “administrative error,” however both the Trump administration and government of El Salvador have currently refused to facilitate Garcia’s return.
“They’re not having any kind of remorse about it or trying to get him back although a judge has ordered them to,” Figures said.
Figures continued, saying although she is against illegal immigration and is unsure how she’ll vote on the bill when it hits the Senate floor, recent deportations such as Garcia’s pushed her to vote against the bill.
“I will have to vote no for today, but I don’t know how I will vote for it once it comes to the floor, once I’ve had an opportunity to really go through it myself,” she said.
HB7 may now progress to the Alabama State Senate floor for a vote.
