This story is a part of “Trump Two: Six Months In,” our sequence taking inventory of the administration’s efforts to reshape immigration enforcement and legal justice.
When Alabama lawmakers handed a sweeping anti-immigration invoice in 2011, backlash was swift. Immigrant advocates warned that Latinos had been fleeing the state, fearing arrests for his or her standing or for “harboring” undocumented folks. And a few enterprise leaders condemned the regulation after police arrested German and Japanese automobile executives for not having their licenses on them, a observe meant to funnel undocumented folks from police stops into deportation proceedings.
Civil rights teams sued, and courts overturned a lot of the regulation as unconstitutional. Activists thought the trouble was behind them. However this yr, it’s come roaring again. In Might, Alabama established a brand new crime for transporting undocumented immigrants into the state.
Alabama is considered one of 37 states which have enacted a mixed whole of at the least 104 immigration-related legal guidelines in 2025, in accordance with an evaluation of information from the Nationwide Convention of State Legislatures. The legal guidelines mirror a nationwide crackdown on immigration galvanized by the Trump administration, with dozens of statutes creating new restrictions and penalties round employment, voting, schooling, driver’s licenses, public advantages and different facets of life for non-citizens.
Republican-Led States Have Handed Most New Immigration Legal guidelines in 2025
States enacted dozens of recent immigration-related statutes in 2025 that improve policing and prohibit voting and ID playing cards for non-citizens.
Supply: Nationwide Convention of State Legislatures
Lawmakers are paying particular consideration to the function of state and native policing in immigration enforcement, passing at the least 34 legal guidelines this yr that encourage these businesses’ cooperation with federal authorities, criminalize support to undocumented immigrants, create state immigration enforcement bureaus and extra. As of July, the variety of these new legal guidelines is greater than double the tally of comparable legal guidelines enacted in all of 2024.
In at the least 4 states — Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Idaho — new strict anti-immigration legal guidelines are much like ones in different states that courts have already struck down for encroaching on federal immigration enforcement. However Republican lawmakers and governors, vowing help for President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, superior the payments anyway.
These legal guidelines come at a time when authorized students say the U.S. Supreme Court docket may very well be extra receptive to state anti-immigration statutes.
“I feel it is attainable that the Supreme Court docket is altering sufficient, or has modified sufficient by way of its make-up, there’s going to be extra room for state legal legal guidelines which can be near federal immigration legal guidelines,” mentioned Hiroshi Motomura, a regulation professor on the College of California Los Angeles. “However who is aware of the place that line goes to be drawn.”
NCSL’s database consists of payments and amendments handed into regulation with a governor’s signature and resolutions authorised by a state legislature. Its monitoring dates again to 2008, permitting for comparability of comparable legal guidelines over time.
When Frank Barragan, an organizer with the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, realized that the state had handed a regulation mirroring one which courts had already struck down, he mentioned his “arms had been stuffed with chills… it was sickening.”
Barragan mentioned Alabama activists are getting ready to help the state’s 200,000 foreign-born residents, however the challenges are higher now than they had been 14 years in the past. “We’re not combating simply the state of Alabama,” he mentioned. “We’re combating the complete administration.”
New legal guidelines handed in Tennessee and Alabama broaden the scope of immigration enforcement by concentrating on people and teams that help undocumented folks.
As of Might, charitable organizations in Tennessee that home unauthorized immigrants will be held liable if these tenants commit crimes. One other regulation permits prosecutors to cost folks, together with U.S. residents, with felony “human smuggling” in the event that they conceal undocumented folks from authorities for “business benefit or non-public monetary acquire.”
“It’s simply principally a solution to make it possible for Tennessee shouldn’t be a hospitable place for unlawful aliens,” mentioned Memphis State Sen. Brent Taylor, who co-authored each legal guidelines. “In the event that they need to function and dwell on this nation, they need to discover one other state.”
Immigrant rights teams sued in June, arguing that the regulation is so broad that it criminally implicates relations and roommates of present or previously undocumented folks, in addition to landlords, charities and homes of worship that supply migrants shelter. The regulation went into impact on July 1 and stays energetic whereas authorized challenges proceed.
Taylor co-authored one other regulation dealing with authorized pushback. Senate Invoice 6002 permits Tennessee prosecutors to cost elected officers with felonies and face 1–6 years in jail for voting in favor of “sanctuary metropolis” insurance policies that search to guard immigrants from deportation. In an ongoing federal lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union mentioned that is “the primary recognized occasion in American historical past the place a state has imposed felony legal responsibility on native officers merely for the point of view expressed of their votes.”
Few precedents exist for the legal guidelines handed in Tennessee and Alabama this yr. In a single instance from 2023, Florida amended its human smuggling statute to incorporate the transportation of immigrants missing authorized standing. An injunction on the regulation stays in place. A lawsuit has but to be filed in opposition to Alabama’s related invoice, which matches into impact in October.
President Donald Trump excursions a migrant detention heart on the Dade-Collier Coaching and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida, on July 1, 2025.
Other new legal guidelines create crimes particularly concentrating on undocumented immigrants, in a means that critics say provides folks legal information to extra simply justify their deportation.
Trump has pledged to deport “the worst of the worst,” but most individuals that ICE detains haven’t any legal convictions. However new state legal guidelines in Florida and Idaho criminalize immigrants only for being undocumented.
Beneath federal regulation, getting into the nation with out authorization is a misdemeanor offense that traditionally has been hardly ever charged. Being current within the nation with out correct documentation, together with overstaying a visa, is a civil violation moderately than against the law. Visa overstays are estimated to be the most typical type of unlawful immigration.
In March, Florida enacted Senate Invoice 4-C, which matches additional than federal regulation by creating a brand new crime for getting into the state as an undocumented particular person, with a minimal penalty of 9 months in jail. An analogous current regulation from Idaho establishes crimes for unlawful entry into the state and for trafficking migrants throughout the border. A federal decide blocked it in April.
Adam Cox, an immigration regulation professor at New York College, mentioned the brand new legal guidelines let police arrest undocumented individuals who have dedicated no different crime within the state. “It permits the state that the native cop is in to say, ‘Aha, there is a state crime I can now arrest you for that’s going to place you within the deportation pipeline.’”
If courts finally uphold these legal guidelines, it could successfully broaden the immigration enforcement community all the way down to beat cops on site visitors obligation.
Judges have blocked related legal guidelines in 4 different states up to now two years, counting on a 2012 Supreme Court docket determination in Arizona v. United States that strengthened the authority of the federal authorities — not states — to supervise immigration enforcement. However in a newer 2020 determination, Kansas v. Garcia, the Supreme Court docket allowed Kansas to criminally cost non-citizens for submitting false tax varieties, although an identical federal offense exists.
Civil rights teams sued Florida over its new regulation, and a federal decide blocked police and prosecutors from implementing it whereas the case continues. However amid defiant directives from the Florida lawyer normal, some officers continued making immigration arrests for greater than a month. A minimum of 27 folks had been arrested after the decide’s order, a current Marshall Challenge investigation discovered.
Amongst them was Juan Aguilar, who received right into a fender bender in late Might, was arrested by deputies, transferred to ICE custody and deported in just a little over one week. By the point the court docket corrected its error, he was already in Mexico.
“Not everybody who’s there’s a legal; plenty of us are good folks,” Aguilar informed The Marshall Challenge in Spanish. “However they deal with us all the identical.”
States are additionally passing new legal guidelines that ramp up cooperation between police and federal immigration officers.
On Trump’s first day in workplace, he signed an govt order increasing the 287(g) program, which permits police to accomplice with federal immigration authorities by becoming a member of process forces, administering warrants or transferring detainees from native jails to federal custody. Since then, eight states have enacted legal guidelines encouraging or requiring participation in this system, and greater than 600 regulation enforcement businesses throughout the U.S. have signed new partnership agreements, in accordance with a Marshall Challenge evaluation of information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In New Hampshire, Belknap County Sheriff William Wright was the primary sheriff within the state to enter into such a partnership, which started in February. Wright described it as “one other device within the toolbox” for deputies, who can now detain individuals who have federal immigration warrants in opposition to them. Now, 12 regulation enforcement businesses in New Hampshire have entered into the federal agreements.
The Marshall Challenge discovered at the least eight states, together with New Hampshire, that banned sanctuary insurance policies this yr. In the meantime, 5 Democrat-led states handed legal guidelines proscribing cooperation with immigration authorities or banning their entry into faculties and different areas.
New Hampshire state Rep. Ross Berry, a Republican from Hillsborough who co-authored the state’s sanctuary ban, mentioned his constituents are blue-collar staff battling inflation and competing in opposition to undocumented immigrants for work. Berry mentioned his immigration insurance policies are in style amongst his voters.
“My voters loves it,” he mentioned. “I’ll positively be placing it on the market after I run for re-election.”
Not all regulation enforcement leaders agree that immigration enforcement aids their work. The police chief in Hollis, New Hampshire, spoke out in opposition to the state’s anti-sanctuary regulation for opening up officers to legal responsibility and hurting police-community relations. He retired earlier than the invoice was enacted.
In La Vergne, Tennessee, police mentioned the aggressive immigration efforts are scaring folks away from calling for assist throughout emergencies. In Might, a six-month-old died after the child’s caregiver, an undocumented particular person, was too afraid to contact emergency providers, in accordance with La Vergne Police Chief Christopher Moews.
“If I’ve people who find themselves afraid to return ahead and supply a witness assertion to a taking pictures or a theft, and even report a sexual abuse of a kid, or issues of that nature, due to their documentation standing, that’s not serving to out public security right here,” he mentioned.
Even if courts finally strike down the states’ newest anti-immigration legal guidelines, teams that advocate for immigrants’ rights mentioned the brand new measures ship a sign to undocumented folks, their households and their communities. “It would not matter in case you’ve constructed a life right here,” defined Stephanie M. Alvarez-Jones, an lawyer with the Nationwide Immigration Challenge. “It would not matter in case you’ve contributed to your group, or native economic system, or the state economic system. You aren’t protected and you aren’t welcome.”
The legal guidelines additionally draw a hyperlink between immigrants and criminality, although analysis reveals that undocumented folks commit crimes at decrease charges than most of the people, and knowledge doesn’t help narratives of migrant crime waves.
Immigration attorneys and activists throughout the U.S. informed The Marshall Challenge that their shoppers more and more worry being profiled for his or her pores and skin coloration or accent, even when they’re lawful U.S. residents. Consequently, many immigrants are staying indoors, refusing to drive, skipping work or leaving Republican-majority states altogether.
“They’re imply and depressing statutes,” mentioned Carlos Torres, coverage director on the Hispanic and Immigrant Middle of Alabama, in reference to the brand new legal guidelines. “They aren’t actually seeking to empower our group, however as a substitute, are attempting to chop the wings of people that can really be very productive and who’re right here in group with us.”
