The Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act (HB 2278) is part of the House’s attempt to split up comprehensive immigration reform into individual bills. The Act suffers from the fundamentally misguided belief of many Republicans that enforcement has to come before any attempt to rationalize our broken immigration system. Of course, if we fix our Kafka-esque immigration system, then many of the problems with unauthorized immigrants will greatly diminish, if not disappear. Focusing on enforcement is like someone saying during prohibition, “before we can talk about legalizing alcohol we first need to stop all these bootleggers and gangsters.”
The SAFE Act is also a constitutional boondoggle with many dangerous and suspect provisions that guarantee the act will be tied up in court battles, not to mention to litany of expected civil liberties abuses that will arise if the Act is ever enforced. The ACLU and the Center for American Progress have already pointed out many of the civil liberties concerns, as well as the bad policies that animate the Act.
Gone unnoticed is a large and consequential problem that has constitutional ramifications: the Act denies law enforcement and Department of Homeland Security funding to states or municipalities that have policies or practices that “prohibit law enforcement officers of a state…from assisting or cooperating with Federal immigration law enforcement[.]” If a state or municipality has such a policy then they “shall not be eligible to receive…any…law enforcement or Department of Homeland Security grant.” (Section 114).
California has just such a law. The TRUST Act, signed by Governor Brown in October 2013, prohibits California state officials from detaining people when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issues a “hold” request (in order to transfer them to federal immigration authorities) if they have been convicted of only minor crimes.