New legislation has taken effect in Alabama creating the crime of human smuggling and requiring officers to contact ICE if they cannot verify the citizenship of an individual on a traffic stop.
The law explicitly states that officers are not to consider race, color or national origin in this process “except to the extent permitted by the United States Constitution or the Constitution of Alabama of 2022.”
A recent U.S. Supreme Court order allowing ICE to continue using race as a factor in stops and arrests has concerned critics that racial profiling may now be the standard for determining “reasonable suspicion.”
The ACLU of Alabama has dubbed the bill, Senate Bill 53, the “show me your papers” bill on account of these provisions.
The state has already seen an increase in ICE activity from planned raids at construction sites and a chain of Mexican restaurants to traffic stops like the one in Leeds in which ICE agents detained longtime Alabama resident Giovanna Hernandez-Martinez after she was stopped for speeding. Hernandez-Martinez has since self-deported to Mexico after a month in ICE detention.
A Baldwin County man, Leonardo Garcia Venegas, has filed a class-action lawsuit against ICE claiming he has been unlawfully detained twice during warrantless raids on his construction sites. Venegas is a U.S. citizen with Mexican heritage who claims he was twice detained despite showing agents his Real ID.
In addition to the new changes to ICE reporting, the law creates the crime of “human smuggling” for anyone caught transporting an immigrant unlawfully present in the U.S. into the state of Alabama.
The law creates exceptions for:
- Any educator or other employee of an educational entity to transport a student as part of an official educational excursion.
- Any health care provider to transport or treat a patient.
- Any person to transport an individual for noncommercial religious or charitable purposes.
- Any person to transport an individual to or from a location for governmental purposes.
Otherwise it is a Class C Felony to transport an undocumented immigrant into the state.
