{"id":449206,"date":"2026-02-04T21:17:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449206\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T21:17:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T21:17:23","slug":"tennessee-to-test-stephen-millers-plan-of-enlisting-states-for-immigration-enforcement-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449206\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee to test Stephen Miller\u2019s plan of enlisting states for immigration enforcement | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The power to enforce immigration law rests with the federal government. But Trump<\/a> adviser, Stephen Miller, has a vision for states working in coordination with federal immigration<\/a> officials, and he\u2019s attempting to test it out in Tennessee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Miller had been meeting in Washington DC with Tennessee<\/a> speaker of the house, Cameron Sexton, to craft model legislation for states around the country.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, the speaker announced a suite of eight bills that would turn state and local police officers, judges, teachers, social workers and others into an auxiliary extension of the federal immigration system. It makes the presence of an undocumented person with a final deportation order a state crime in Tennessee. And it mandates that officials report the presence of undocumented persons to ICE, while criminalizing disclosure of information about immigration enforcement activities to the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president\u2019s behind us,\u201d said Knoxville-area representative and deputy speaker, Jason Zachary, on a video taken from a talk with a conservative group, describing Sexton\u2019s contact with Miller. \u201cThe president has promised his support on social media for us, and we are being told Tennessee will go first.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Tennessee also established an immigration enforcement division under its department of safety and homeland security, and made the records collected by the chief immigration enforcement officer exempt from Tennessee\u2019s already limited public records access laws. Confidentiality extends to records for grant programs administered by the department, preventing watchdogs from examining what local law enforcement agencies do with federal grant money for immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n

Legislation filed on 15 January doesn\u2019t just extend that confidentiality; it demands it. A state or local official, including judges, \u201cnegligently\u201d releasing identifying information of officers involved in immigration enforcement would face a felony and removal from office.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 1464, criminalizing disclosure, appears to be aimed directly at Freddie O\u2019Connell, the Nashville mayor who issued<\/a> an executive order last year to track and publish ICE contacts in the city. O\u2019Connell briefly published the names of some ICE agents as part of the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really alarming,\u201d said Lisa Sherman-Luna, executive director of the advocacy organization Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. \u201cWe have folks in office who are really creating infrastructure for the secret police, with zero accountability, total impunity, legitimizing the way that ICE is behaving, wearing masks or civilian clothes, not identifying themselves, and giving these guys license to behave in whatever way they desire without an ability for the public to hold them accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the most controversial and legally impactful proposal would require local school systems to verify lawful status for K-12 students. Those without legal residency would be charged tuition. Others could be denied enrollment.<\/p>\n

The Tennessee state senate passed a version of this bill last year, but the state house paused movement while looking for guidance from Washington on how it might affect federal education funding.<\/p>\n

The legislation directly challenges Plyler v Doe, a landmark 1982 US supreme court case that establishes a constitutional right for undocumented children to an education at public expense, setting up revisitation of the decision in the Roberts court.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not clear where the supreme court is going to land on certain issues,\u201d Sherman-Luna said. \u201cAnd the state legislature doesn\u2019t care that things are unconstitutional. They\u2019re betting on the supreme court ruling in their favor, and they\u2019re trying to change the constitution through these kinds of laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day the speaker filed the legislative package \u2013 eight days after an ICE agent killed Renee Good and set off massive protests in Minneapolis \u2013 Sexton held a press conference in Nashville to describe the merits of his legislative proposals.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at Minnesota,\u201d Sexton said<\/a>. \u201cIs Minnesota holding those individuals accountable? Are they holding them accountable for blocking streets? No. You can\u2019t block streets in Tennessee. You\u2019re going to be held accountable or you\u2019re going to go to jail. And Minnesota is just a wild, wild west. They allow people to do anything. It\u2019s actually a detriment to law enforcement. They\u2019re making it less safe to be a police officer or a federal agent in Minnesota.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sexton\u2019s office has not responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

One of the bills requires courts and local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE. This would presumably outlaw efforts by local prosecutors and police to arrest federal immigration agents for violating state law.<\/p>\n

In a continuation of the state\u2019s longstanding conflict with its more progressive cities such as Memphis and Nashville, the legislation would allow Tennessee\u2019s attorney general to withhold state funds and shared sales tax revenue from non-compliant municipalities. Tennessee does not have a state income tax but relies on the second-highest sales tax rate in the country, making this a potent financial threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cDC does not want to fix the problem, and so here we are using a broken system,\u201d said John Ray Clemmons, the state representative from Nashville and chair of the Democratic caucus in Tennessee. \u201cAnd DC is trying to tell us how to target the people who are a result of that broken system, more or less.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clemmons questions the priorities of Republicans. \u201cIt\u2019s lazy to ride the coattails of this administration on immigration, instead of actually addressing the problems people are facing, like ending the grocery tax, expanding access to healthcare, ensuring rural hospitals aren\u2019t closing, fully funding public schools,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But Republican lawmakers rest much of their argument for the legislation on assertions that undocumented migrants cost Tennessee taxpayers millions.<\/p>\n

\u201cRural communities like mine are paying the price for illegal immigration,\u201d said Ken Yager, senate Republican caucus chairman, in a release. \u201cIt places a real strain on local resources and drains taxpayer dollars that should be reinvested right here at home to strengthen our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposed legislation requires monthly reporting about non-citizens receiving public benefits such as housing or medical services, and for those reports to be coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security. A \u201ccomprehensive report detailing the total cost of illegal immigration to Tennessee taxpayers, including schools, hospitals, prisons, and social services\u201d would be published annually, according to an information sheet sent by legislative offices in January.<\/p>\n

Bills in consideration would also require state and local governments to verify lawful status before issuing taxpayer-funded benefits. If someone\u2019s immigration status cannot be verified, it requires the agency to refer the contact to ICE and Tennessee\u2019s centralized immigration enforcement division.<\/p>\n

One bill requires that state contractors use E-Verify, a federal internet-based system allowing employers to electronically confirm the employment eligibility of new hires. The proposed bills would require proof of lawful status for licensed professions, including teachers, nurses and contractors. It also requires driver\u2019s license examinations to be conducted in English, with one-time exceptions, and restricts licenses for some non-citizens.<\/p>\n

This model legislation carries the prospect of broad economic effects from state level immigration policies. Critically, the proposal would criminalize the use of a commercial driver\u2019s license (CDL) by an operator without lawful immigration status. The Trump administration has attacked the issuance of CDLs in California, New York and other Democratic-controlled states to undocumented drivers. Transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, is withholding<\/a> some federal funds and has threatened<\/a> to block California from issuing CDLs to anyone over the state\u2019s practices.<\/p>\n

The legislation sets up the prospect of Tennessee state troopers checking the immigration status of out-of-state drivers passing through the state. As model legislation, a line of states from Indiana to Texas implementing the policy could create a deportation hazard for undocumented cross-country truckers.<\/p>\n

Immigration activists are organizing in Tennessee to oppose restrictive state-level legislation, but are under resourced, Sherman-Luna said. The political focus on federal races and chaos in Washington DC draws money and attention from red state fights, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recipe for fighting authoritarianism is in the south, because it\u2019s not just Tennessee,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve too long been been neglected in favor of the electoral map.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The power to enforce immigration law rests with the federal government. But Trump adviser, Stephen Miller, has a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-449206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}