State Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Josephine) believes it’s the responsibility of the state government to assist the federal government when it comes to enforcing immigration law, and he’s expecting the Legislature to take up the issue this session.
State leaders have already promised to help President Donald Trump’s administration in deporting illegal immigrants. Lt. Governor Will Ainsworth announced on Friday that the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) has formed a task force to work “hand-in-glove” with federal agencies in carrying that out.
Elliott told Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal,” that it’s now up to the Legislature to step up on the issue of illegal immigration.
“There is a slew of different pieces of legislation that the House and Senate have been working on, trying to combine and condense that our state laws that will allow us to detain, hold and wait for our federal partners to do their job on their side of things,” Elliott said. “We’re here to assist and complement what the feds are doing.”
The lawmaker said the plan to address ways to discourage illegal immigrants from wanting to come to Alabama in the first place.
“If you’re an illegal immigrant in Alabama, the message is clear, and that is you shouldn’t be here,” he argued. “You’re gonna face a slew of state penalties if you stay here in Alabama illegally, and it’s going to be very hard for you to live legally, day in day out in Alabama if you’re not here in the country legally. And so yeah, thanks for coming. You’ve worn out your welcome. It’s time to go.”
Elliott also had a warning to those illegal immigrants that still decide to stay in the state.
“If you stay there, are going to be a slew of state laws that really increase the likelihood that we’re going to catch you being here illegally,” he said, “that we’re going to detain you for violating a state law, and that we’re going to hand you off to our federal partners to to handle you through the immigration side of things.”
Elliott echoed recent sentiments by the Trump administration on the issue, declaring that all immigrants in the country illegally are criminals by definition.
“Let’s be clear about this, if you’re here illegally in the United States, you have broken the law. If you’re here illegally in the state of Alabama, then you’ve broken the law,” he said. “And if you do any of the things here that we’re going to try to pass…you will be breaking the law as well. And so to say that these are immigrants that are here that haven’t broken the law is not necessarily true. I want to be careful about how we do this and targeted about how this we do this, but I’m pretty firm on the fact that if you’re here and you’ve broken the law in order to be here, then you need to go home.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
