Wait for it: accusations of white supremacy and ‘hate’ will be leveraged against this too little, too late legislative proposal.
A Republican lawmaker in Georgia introduced a bill that would force local governments to transfer detained illegal immigrants to the custody of federal law enforcement.
House Bill 915, introduced by Rep. Philip Singleton, would require local police to turn undocumented immigrants they arrest over to federal immigration authorities.
“There is a sanctuary city portion of our code that prevents it in the state of Georgia, but there is no enforcement mechanism,” Singleton said Monday on Fox & Friends. “Our own statistics say that over 1,500 people that went into the system in November were repeat-offender criminal aliens. About 14% of those were sexual assault, about 10% for murder, and about 8% for rape.”
So-called sanctuary cities are municipalities that have indicated they will not help Immigration and Customs Enforcement or any other federal agencies find and detain immigrants who have entered the country illegally.
There are several of these in Georgia, including Atlanta and neighboring Clarkston and DeKalb counties.
Singleton’s bill would expand on a 2016 Georgia law that requires local governments to prove they comply with federal detention requests related to undocumented immigrants to receive state funding, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Critics of the Singleton measure say his bill goes a step too far.
“Georgia does not need this legislation, and it is simply aimed as a distraction and fearmongering during an election year,” Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the nonprofit organization Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, told the Marietta Daily Journal.
Singleton said he was inspired by President Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and criticism of sanctuary cities across the country.
“What I’m doing is trying to provide legislation that will actually make Americans and Georgians safer and try to fulfill some of the things the president is doing on the federal level,” Singleton said. “[Trump was] 100% right about the dangers of sanctuary cities in his State of the Union speech.”
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