BOISE, ID – The Idaho Senate on Wednesday easily passed a bill creating new reporting requirements for refugee resettlement and arrested individuals’ immigration status and nationality.

Senate Bill 1442 faced strong opposition from Idaho law enforcement organizations in its public hearing on March 30, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported. Idaho sheriffs and police officers argued some of the requirements weren’t workable and redundant.

Senate President Pro Tempore Kelly Anthon, a Declo Republican, said the bill is about gathering information.

“We’ve made a lot of requirements of our agencies and our local governments to report data,” Anthon said on the floor. “This is no different, and it’s no more stringent, and it is not a hardship.”

The bill combines three other bills that failed to advance this session. It would:

• Require the Idaho Office for Refugees, which is managed by a private nonprofit in partnership with the federal government, to report demographic, language, health and housing data about the people the office serves.
• Prohibit the refugee office from helping any undocumented people, or “encouraging or inducing” someone to remain in the U.S. illegally.
• Require all local and county law enforcement to verify immigration status and nationality of every person arrested, and report information twice a year, including the number of undocumented people arrested and the crimes they were charged with.
• Allow the Idaho attorney general to force agencies that don’t comply after notice of noncompliance, or withhold state funding to the cities or counties that fund the noncompliant law enforcement agency.

The bill passed on a party-line 28-6 vote after limited debate. It will go to the House for further consideration.

Kellogg Republican Sen. Phil Hart said he thought the bill was needed to provide oversight of taxpayer money.

Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, a Boise Democrat, said she felt the bill was conflating the refugee resettlement process, which is a legal immigration process that requires extensive vetting, with illegal immigration.

Wintrow said the refugee offices are already reporting most of the information, except for the housing data, which she thought felt like the government was tracking individuals.

Idaho State Refugee Coordinator Tara Wolfson said in a written statement to the Sun that the office is required to submit data to the federal Department of Health and Human Services and must participate in an annual audit.

“On the local level, we hold quarterly consultations with elected officials, school districts,  healthcare partners, and other stakeholders to share resettlement data and updates,” Wolfson said. “We also share data on our website and are available to state legislators and community  partners to answer questions.”

Law enforcements groups argue bill oversteps into federal immigration role

Idaho police officers and sheriffs have said that the bill would require local law enforcement to step into an immigration enforcement role, which is typically solely the job of federal authorities.

“This puts us in a precarious situation where we’re doing the job of someone else, a federal agent,” Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue said at the hearing. “And it’s putting our law enforcement officers at risk of litigation and liability, which puts our cities and our counties in that same liability.”

Donahue and other officers said law enforcement in Idaho already work closely with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Former U.S. Attorney for Idaho, Josh Hurwit, said in an interview with the Sun the bill is a “solution in search of a problem.”

“Having local law enforcement try to figure out in every interaction, potentially, the immigration status of someone is not, apparently, what (police) want to do and not something that has been done,” Hurwit said.

Nationality must also be verified and recorded on each arrest, but nationality isn’t defined in the bill. Hurwit said there could be confusion if that’s being asked and verified by law enforcement to every person arrested.

He noted that jail staff already share information with federal immigration authorities about inmates. He said it would add redundancy to also require local police officers to verify immigration status and nationality on every arrest.

“I saw very strong, effective cooperation between the federal law enforcement and local law enforcement,” Hurwit said.

Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.