Immigration Bill Could Charge Lawmakers for Opposing Crackdown

The primary legislation of this week’s special session, related to Gov. Bill Lee’s education vouchers, took a back seat Wednesday while debate heated up on immigration bill SB 6002/HB 6001.  

Immigration Bill Sees Debate 

During the afternoon’s Senate floor session, Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) was the lone Republican to vote against a bill that would create a centralized immigration enforcement division, a state deportation czar and a grant program for local law enforcement to set up detainment agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The new division would be exempt from the state's Public Records Act. 

On the Hill: What’s on Deck This Year in the State Legislature

The 114th Tennessee General Assembly will consider education, immigration, guns and health care

Not only would the bill create criminal penalties for officials who adopt sanctuary policies and aim to have them removed from office — it would also amend state law to criminalize the actions of any elected official who “votes in the affirmative to adopt a sanctuary policy.”

“Think about the consequences of a class-E felony,” Gardenhire said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “You can't go to a bank and borrow money when they find out you have a class-E felony on your record. There's a lot of things you get boxed out of for having that.”

“The issue is, if we're telling an elected official you can't cast a vote, that to me is not part of being a republic,” he continued.

Sens. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville), Heidi Campbell (D-Nashville) and Sara Kyle (D-Memphis) also spoke out against the bill, with Yarbro adding that it “plainly and blatantly violates the Tennessee Constitution.” Senate Democratic Caucus Chair London Lamar (D-Memphis) proposed an amendment to remove the felony clause, but it was shot down. 

The potential for future legal challenges was also echoed by legislative attorney Matt Mundy during Wednesday morning's House Immigration Committee. That committee saw an extended recess when three protesters were forcibly removed from the committee room by Tennessee state troopers. They were not arrested or charged with any crimes. 

“I do think that the application of the criminal penalty to certain categories or classes of local officials will be problematic constitutionally,” Mundy said, citing both the state and federal speech and debate clauses and common-law immunity for deliberative bodies.

On Tuesday, in remarks to the Scene sister publication the Williamson Scene, Campbell likened the creation of the division to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police force. Campbell sought through an amendment to make schools, churches and other designated safe zones exempt from immigration enforcement, and it was tabled. 

"This is going to, and already is creating incredible fear in not just the undocumented immigrant population in our state, but in documented immigrants and people who are here legally," Campbell said. "This deserves the due process of going through a regular session and the consideration by all of the committees in a regular session."

References to Nazi Germany were also made on the Senate floor Wednesday. Sen. Charlane Oliver (D-Nashville) likened the proposed addition of immigration status on state identification to Jewish identification badges used during the Third Reich.

The bill creates a grant program for counties that take part in the federal 287(g) program, introduced in 1996, that allows for state and local law enforcement to enforce some immigration laws. Only two Tennessee counties have taken advantage of the program, Lamar pointed out.  

Sen. Ken Yager (R-Kingston) and Sen. Becky Massey (R-Knoxville), who support the bill, spoke of overdoses in their districts, which they claim are due to undocumented immigrants. Sen. Bo Watson (R-Hixson), who gave the closing statement on the immigration bill Wednesday, evoked President Donald Trump pointing to immigration as the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. 

“We realize that when President Trump was elected and when he began enforcing what he said he was going to do, that it would require coordination, cooperation and collaboration between the states,” Watson said. 

The House will take up the immigration, school voucher and appropriations- related bills on Thursday morning with the Senate to follow with the latter two. 

Disaster Relief Bills Move Forward 

Late Wednesday night, the House gathered to approve millions in relief funds for East Tennessee, which saw flooding from Hurricane Helene in September.

The legislation allows the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency to provide assistance at the request of local governments, suspends certain unemployment eligibility requirements for residents in the disaster area, established two funds in the state treasury to assist with disaster relief and gives 2024 property tax breaks to those whose homes were destroyed or damaged as a result of the hurricane. 

Rep. Bo Mitchell (D-Nashville) proposed an amendment, which was ultimately blocked, to take $50 million from the state’s rainy day fund to give $10,000 grants to 5,000 people in disaster-affected areas who lost their homes. 

“We’ve got $2.1 billion in our rainy-day funds,” said Mitchell, who later noted his frustration at the state’s delayed response time in providing disaster relief. He compared the state to North Carolina, which passed disaster aid 11 days after Hurricane Helene ravaged the state. "If a flood isn’t a rainy day, I don’t know what is, folks."

“Obviously we’re not here to help these people in East Tennessee whatsoever,” Mitchell said. “We don’t really care about those people. We’re here to do something else. Obviously we’re here to pass some vouchers and bow down to some lobbyists,” Mitchell said before House Speaker Cameron Sexton cut him off for straying away from the subject matter of his amendment. 

Another bill — SB 6006/HB 6006, brought by Sen. Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin) and Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville) — creates the Tennessee Transportation Financing Authority, and also passed the Senate 31-2. The only two no votes were cast by Sens. Mark Pody (R-Lebanon) and Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald). It later passed the House 80-17, with all those against the authority’s creation being Democrats. While facing questions about the bill from the opposing party, Garrett said the authority will be the board that oversees bonds for the public-private partnerships through the 2023 Transportation Modernization Act, which is set to create a user fee lane from Murfreesboro to Nashville.

“If we can get this done now, the authority can be started; we can start procuring those contracts and that construction for those choice lanes begin immediately,” Garrett said, adding that it could take weeks during the regular session to move the bill.