Mobile County lawmaker proposes harsher penalties for illegal immigrants convicted of crimes
- by FOX10 News
- Oct 11, 2024
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Published: Oct. 10, 2024 at 7:18 PM CDT
|Updated: 5 hours ago A Mobile County lawmaker is targeting illegal immigration – through the criminal justice system.
Illegal immigrants who commit crimes in Alabama would face more severe punishment under Rep. Chip Brown’s proposal. A misdemeanor would become a felony. A Class C felony would because a Class B, and so on. The most serious crimes, normally punishable by 10 years to life in prison, would carry a mandatory-minimum of 15 years in prison.
Brown (R-Hollinger’s Island) said the changes would send a strong message to illegal immigrants and address what he says is a reluctance of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in the current administration to carry out deportations.
“So this a way to hopefully be a deterrent because every day, we see crimes committed against Alabamians by illegal immigrants,” he told FOX10 News. “So hopefully, if we put a little oomph onto the sentencing side of things, that we could maybe be a deterrent for people coming here.”
Allison Hamilton, executive director of the Birmingham-based Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, said she does not believe Brown’s proposal would deter illegal immigration. She added that long-standing problems in the prison system would be exacerbated by longer prison sentences.
“They’re already harsh enough,” she said. “Felony convictions in Alabama are notoriously harsh, and we also have overcrowding in our prisons. We’re paying a lot of money to keep people in prison, so it doesn’t really seem logical to increase the penalty specifically for undocumented immigrants.”
Hamilton said unlawful immigrants who commit other crimes usually face double-punishment – prison for the offense and then deportation.
“We have not seen almost any cases where somebody was in jail for a conviction and was not turned over to ICE,” she said.
It would not be the first time Alabama has tried to crack down on illegal immigration. But in the past, the state has faced a skeptical hearing in the federal courts. The courts struck down a sweeping immigration law in 2011 on grounds that the state was usurping an authority that belongs exclusively to the federal government.
Hamilton said she could not speak to the constitutionality of Brown’s proposal.
“But I do think it’s very problematic and a violation of people’s civil rights,” she said.
Brown said he anticipates legal challenges and welcomes them.
“That’s the way we change constitutional law, is that we at the states, we speak up, that we pass legislation that that may challenge the norms,” he said. “And that way, we ride it all the way up the Supreme Court.”
Jessical Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the legal and political environments are different than they were in 2011.
“But times have changed a lot,” she said. “We’re at a historic level of illegal immigration, and the court has sent down some other decisions recently that have led some constitutional scholars to believe that they are still open to certain kinds of involvement on the part of the states.”
Vaughan, whose organization favors tighter immigration restrictions, said there is a record number of legislative proposals at the state level to try to curtail illegal immigration.
“It’s not surprising that a state like Alabama is looking for things that it can do with state authority to address the problem of illegal immigration, and specifically that fraction of the illegal migrant population that’s committing crimes because they’re causing problems in communities in Alabama,” she said.
Copyright 2024 WALA. All rights reserved.
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