House lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee debated a proposal Thursday that would force state and local police to help federal agents conduct deportations or risk losing federal funding. Not only would it essentially hold local jurisdictions hostage, Democratic lawmakers said, it also violates states’ rights. 

The bill, the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act, aims to punish Los Angeles, New York, and other cities that have policies limiting cooperation with federal agents, such as restrictions on honoring ICE detainers, providing access to jails, and sharing information about individuals’ immigration status. These cities have been in the crosshairs of the Trump administration for months; Attorney General Pam Bondi last year published a hit list of sanctuary jurisdictions, saying they cause risk to American citizens “by design.”  

“Who will stand up for the Tenth Amendment, the right of the people in our state and local governments not to be conscripted and coerced into service and commandeered by the federal government to implement federal policies chosen at a different level of government?” asked ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD). 

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“You might love what ICE has been doing in Minnesota. You might hate it. You might love the idea of sanctuary cities or you might hate it. But regardless, this bill goes way beyond sanctuary cities. This bill is a full-blown assault on the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution,” Raskin said.  

The debate came during chaos at the top of Trump’s mass deportation machine. Earlier this week, Democratic lawmakers excoriated Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for two days, including for refusing to back down from calling two legal observers, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, “domestic terrorists,” after her agents publicly executed them in Minnesota. Trump fired Noem on Thursday, not for that but for telling Congress under oath that Trump had OK’d her $220 million ad campaign. He replaced her with Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a 2020 election denier who once challenged Teamsters President Sean O’Brien during a hearing to a fistfight and who opposes birthright citizenship, saying last summer that a child born in the U.S. should be deported if their parents are. 

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) sponsored the proposed law that Judiciary Committee members debated yesterday. Among other things, it would “supersede any and all state and local laws, ordinances, regulations, and policies that directly or indirectly prohibit or restrict, in whole or in part,” the activities of federal immigration agents. Cities and states that fail to comply would lose funding for law enforcement; the money would be reallocated to other jurisdictions. 

The proposal is an attempt to force every state and local government in America to turn every sheriff, police officer, and other public employee into an agent of the federal government and “of this administration’s basically incompetent and dangerous immigration operations,” Raskin said.  

“It’s not enough for our colleagues that DHS has now 80,000 police officers of its own, more than the number of officers of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Las Vegas, and Dallas combined, or that it has a larger annual budget than 150 nations on Earth,” he continued. “They now also want to force every local state and police officer in America essentially to be deputized federal law enforcement agents. 

The bill was reported favorably to the House following the debate. 

IN NEW YORK CITY, ADVOCATES, activists, and elected officials gathered to demand lawmakers strengthen the types of laws that House members were debating yesterday. The group met outside City Hall, where the New York City Council’s Committee on Oversight and Investigations was scheduled to review compliance with the city’s sanctuary laws. The committee’s hearing was the first to discuss the issue after it found that the NYPD and the Department of Corrections had violated them by collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under former Mayor Eric Adams.

The group called on the city to pass the New York City Trust Act, which would create a private right of action allowing an immigrant to sue if a city illegally coordinates with ICE. 

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“We’re trying to close the ability for New York City to coordinate with ICE out of their own volition,” said Jim Talbott, a member of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice who is a lead organizer on the topic. He added that he agreed with the argument Democratic lawmakers were making in Washington against the anti–sanctuary city proposal. 

“We live in this federalist system. It’s not purely like, I hate what ICE is doing. Every American should be incensed by the idea that the federal government can deputize your local law enforcement to follow their aims,” he said. “It is part of the American tradition that we do have these separate levels of government that are able to be largely independent.” 

Councilmember Alexa Avilés, a member of the council’s committee on immigration, also addressed the audience, saying it’s necessary to “pass every law and policy at our disposal that removes ambiguity to help our city workforce do right by its laws and helps the workforce understand what its responsibilities are for New Yorkers.” 

Avilés represents the 38th District, a part of Brooklyn that federal agents have terrorized with relentless deportations. 

“We need to pass policies that go an extra mile because this government, this federal apparatus, is going the extra mile to harm and murder individuals across this country,” she said. 

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Whitney Curry Wimbish is a staff writer at The American Prospect. She previously worked in the Financial Times newsletters division, The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh, and the Herald News in New Jersey. Her work has been published in multiple outlets, including The New York Times, The Baffler, Los Angeles Review of Books, Music & Literature, North American Review, Sentient, Semafor, and elsewhere. She is a coauthor of The Majority Report’s daily newsletter and publishes short fiction in a range of literary magazines.