Communities across the country are mobilizing against increasingly aggressive federal immigration enforcement, but Arizona’s Legislative Republicans are moving to integrate the state into President Donald Trump’s deportation machine through a growing slate of immigration bills.
Republicans have introduced over a dozen bills in Arizona’s State Legislature this year to increase cooperation with federal law enforcement and allocate more funding to the national mass deportation machine. Other proposed efforts would further criminalize immigration-related offenses and erode trust between medical professionals and immigrants.
Their effort is not new, but it’s increasing each year, said Stephanie Maldonado, political director of Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), an organization advocating for immigrant communities and working families. The slew of Republican-backed bills is an attempt to control and criminalize communities of color through greater collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the state of Arizona, Maldonado said.
READ MORE: Arizona Republicans introduce proposal that could make life harder for ICE observers
“They [Republicans] are using immigration as the divide, but this is ultimately about power and choosing cruelty over the things that really matter for Arizonans like affordability,” Maldonado said.
While many of the bills are likely to pass due to the state legislature’s Republican majority, Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs is expected to veto them.
In previous years, Hobbs has vetoed legislation that would force cooperation between local law enforcement and immigration authorities, and recently released a “know your rights” website, informing Arizonans of their constitutional rights when engaging with federal law enforcement or in peaceful protests. She also told 12News in January that she doesn’t think ICE is making communities safer.
The Democrat vying for reelection in a border state that Trump won in 2024 could however change course on more targeted border-security measures.
“Republicans are choosing cruelty over solving the affordability crisis,” Maldonado said. “Instead of…funding things that matter to their constituents, like our schools, like health care, like housing and real public safety, we are instead seeing them divert…our taxpayer dollars into feeding a machine that is already excessively funded.
As part of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law last year, ICE and other federal immigration agencies are receiving an extra $190 billion in funding over the next four years.
Community organizations are fighting back
LUCHA has been packing committee hearing rooms with people to speak out against the state-level bills—many of whom have expressed their objection to allocating more state money towards federal immigration enforcement and away from affordability efforts.
Republicans have pushed forward a number of measures to increase funding for immigration enforcement, like a bill that would allocate $20 million to cities and towns to build border walls along the southern border.
A different bill would direct another $20 million to cities and towns for expenses related to short-term detention holds for undocumented immigrants. Another bill would allocate $20 million to the Department of Public Safety exclusively for local border support.
“At a time when families are struggling to afford rent, groceries, and healthcare, SB1156 would direct $20 million in taxpayer dollars toward detaining people captured by ICE, an agency that is killing US Citizens and immigrants alike, instead of using our tax dollars to make life more affordable for working families,” Francisco Torres, a member of LUCHA, said during the bill’s committee hearing.
Many of the proposed bills would raise the legal consequences for immigration-related offenses that are already considered state crimes, like HB2345, which would make it a class 5 felony in Arizona for people without legal status to drive a big rig with a falsified commercial drivers license. Current Arizona law already punishes use of a fictitious or fraudulently altered drivers license with a class 2 misdemeanor.
Others are just cruel, Maldonado said. A proposal introduced in both the House and the Senate would require hospitals that accept Medicaid, which is nearly every hospital in the state, to ask patients about their immigration status.
“It is about the Republicans…having power over the systems that were intended to be for [helping] people…hospitals are supposed to be a place where you go get better, it’s a safe place…regardless of who you are or what you look like or what your background is you will be served,” Maldonado said.
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Attempts to increase cooperation with ICE
A number of the measures encourage increased cooperation between federal immigration enforcement and state and local law enforcement.
One bill would outright require Arizona law enforcement to work with ICE, by requiring local law enforcement to immediately notify ICE when making arrests if the officer suspects an individual of being undocumented—likely increasing the frequency of racial profiling.
“I want the police focused on public safety, not demanding papers. I want my neighbors to feel safe reporting crimes, not afraid of being taken. They are deporting people regardless of status and shooting people like you and me on the streets,” Alyssa Lamontagne-Owens, a member of LUCHA, said during the bill’s committee hearing.
Another measure with the potential to increase racial profiling is HB2446, requiring drivers to demonstrate English proficiency during roadside inspections. The bill mandates that inspections be conducted only in English.
SB1444, meanwhile, would create a deportation task force that includes municipal police departments and county sheriff’s offices to work with ICE, and would require an unidentified amount of funding from the state general fund.
Republican lawmakers are also trying to crack down on citizen observers who document ICE activity with HB2811, which would expand the offense of obstructing governmental operations to include obstructing or hindering a lawful arrest through the use or threat of violence or physical force.
As for Democratic lawmakers, the minority party has filed several bills attempting to protect immigrant communities.
SB1342 would prohibit state and local agencies from stopping or detaining people based solely on immigration status, HB2922 would protect homeowners from being charged with obstruction for refusing to open their doors to police, and HB2882 would prohibit law enforcement from concealing their identity outside of undercover operations; among others.
Maldonado doesn’t anticipate any of the Democrat-backed bills will pass. Instead, she and LUCHA are focused on fighting the Republican bills.
“It goes back to control, and power, and stripping away people’s protections in every setting…we’ll keep seeing what other ways they [Republicans] want to exert a power grab,” Maldonado said.
