‘Open Season’: Local Republicans Rush to Out-Trump Trump on Immigration
State lawmakers are trying to deputize bounty hunters, fingerprint children, and take away gun rights from people with legal status.
WHEN YOU THINK OF A BOUNTY HUNTER, maybe you think of one of those reality-TV shows, like Dog the Bounty Hunter. But for me, it’s Star Wars that comes to mind.
The mysterious rogue, Boba Fett, sharing a scene with Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back? The Mandalorian dispatched to find Baby Yoda? Their duties are clear. The bounty hunter is taking you in either “warm” or “cold,” as they say—arresting you or killing you. Unless, of course, you’re Baby Yoda.
Now, thanks to Republicans in Mississippi and Missouri, the rules of bounty hunting could be applied to undocumented immigrants. Prospective laws in each state would allow residents to receive $1,000 a pop, to be paid if a tip on someone in the country illegally leads to an arrest. Meanwhile, the Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act—yes, the TRUMP Act—became Florida law yesterday; among other things, it provides for any law enforcement officer who assists in the arrest of a person in the state illegally to receive a $1,000 bonus. It turns out you can act as a bounty hunter even while wearing the uniform of the state.
The outsourcing and incentivizing of immigration enforcement extends beyond there. In Oklahoma, the state board of education approved collecting the immigration status of children when parents enroll them. In Tennessee, lawmakers are zeroing in on the cost of educating undocumented children with their own TRUMP Act—in this case, the Tennessee Reduction of Unlawful Migrant Placement, the Washington Post reported.
The ultimate goal in these cases is not just to up the number of detentions but to challenge the landmark 1982 Plyler v. Doe ruling, which holds that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education due to their immigration status.
In Texas, state Republicans are looking to have law enforcement fingerprint children so the Department of Public Safety can maintain a database of kids under 18 suspected to be in the country illegally, which follows a slew of anti-immigrant legislation the state has moved forward since Trump’s win.
If the Trump administration has been frustrated by the pace of its mass deportation efforts at the federal level—with ICE leadership being reassigned and new leaders coming in amid a scramble to reach arrest quotas—the same cannot be said at the state level, where Republicans are seizing on this new punitive approach toward immigrants to push increasingly harsh new measures.
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez—the president of NextGen America, one of the largest youth voting organizations in the country, and a former U.S. Senate candidate from Texas—said these moves in her state, where one in three people are immigrants or children of immigrants, have been galling.
“State and local governments have been happy to be laboratories for the most draconian efforts around immigration, especially in the South, despite a huge population of immigrants helping them grow in construction and agriculture across Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia,” she told The Bulwark.
“This is exactly why it’s so important that immigration enforcement is left to the federal government: These kinds of legislation are shortsighted and can create situations where there’s harassment and, frankly, violence directed to minority communities,” a former DHS official told The Bulwark. The official called it “open season” on immigrants. “If ICE, with all their capabilities, is detaining U.S. citizens, what the fuck is a bounty hunter going to do to make the situation better?”
An analysis by the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) shows the new types of legislation Republicans are pushing fall into certain buckets. There are the familiar bills around requiring localities to work with law enforcement, which leads to punishment for sanctuary cities who do not work with federal immigration agents. There are also efforts to mimic Texas SB4, passed in 2023, which makes it a state crime to cross from Mexico into Texas.
“President Trump has made it clear that states will play a major role in partnering with his administration to enforce immigration laws and keep communities safe, and Tennessee is heeding the call,” Governor Bill Lee said days after Trump’s inauguration. Lee was announcing a sweeping immigration bill to create a new office to work closely with the Trump administration on immigration efforts and threatening to remove officials who attempt to establish sanctuary cities and charge them with a class E felony, punishable by a fine of up to $3,000 and as much as six years in jail.
Another bucket includes legislation that would force different types of agencies to pose immigration-status questions to those people seeking essential services, from schools to hospitals. These proposals have been put forward in states like Arizona, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Texas, with Florida already having passed a law along these lines.
The idea, NILC said, is to enlist people at all levels of public life to either carry out the Trump administration’s agenda, or dissuade them from helping vulnerable people seeking refuge, essential aid, or legal help. Kica Matos, the group’s president, called the developments at the state level “chilling.”
“Trump and the GOP are obsessively funneling resources across all levels of public life toward his mass-deportations agenda while at the same time attacking communities and organizations that are rightly standing with their immigrant neighbors, patients, and students,” she said.
Not all Republican governors are rushing to adopt the most extreme measures. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, for one, has vowed to stop the state education board’s plan to collect the immigration status of children.
“Collecting 6, 7, 8-year-old kids’ addresses and immigration status in the state of Oklahoma, that’s not a public safety issue,” Stitt said. “Let’s go after the people that are committing crimes, and let’s not terrorize and make our kids not show up for school.”
And legal groups like NILC say there has been a bright spot: Groups across the country are organizing to fight back and to advocate inclusive, pro-immigrant state policies to counter the excesses and influence of the Trump immigration regime.
There’s movement in that direction in several statehouses, too. In New Jersey last fall, legislation was introduced that would provide protection for immigrants interacting with government agencies, broadly limiting inquiries, collection, and disclosure of information. In Missouri, a bill being debated would prohibit health care professionals from recording or disclosing patients’ immigration status, while in Nevada a bill is being considered to prohibit schools from allowing immigration enforcement access without a judicial warrant. In North Carolina, there are two pieces of legislation under consideration that would together limit immigration enforcement at sensitive locations like schools, places of worship, hospitals, as well as near farms or construction sites.
IF YOU’VE BEEN FOLLOWING THE NEWSLETTER or [gesturing broadly] everything going on in America, you know Trump’s immigration crackdown rests on the creation and acceptance of his version of reality.
We’re under invasion, by government decree. Immigrants bring illness, crime, and siphon resources.
These claims are the assumed foundations upon which Trump’s policy pronouncements rest. Such is the case with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Yes, these gang members are in the United States. The larger question for lawmakers is what level of resources we should devote to tracking and then smoking them out—or, relatedly, whether we should change our laws to deal with them.
In Utah, State Rep. Trevor Lee says the gang’s stateside activities are such a concern for him that he’s become a rare thing in the year 2025: a Republican actually looking to curtail gun rights.
That’s because Lee wants asylum seekers, refugees, and even people with legal temporary protected status, who arrived from war-torn countries or places ravaged by natural disaster, to not be able to “possess, purchase, transfer or own dangerous weapons.”
In an interview with The Bulwark, he said he wants Utah state code to be in compliance with Trump’s federal policies, and he called Tren de Aragua a “huge” problem, citing two incidents since September, one of them being an alleged prostitution ring.
But local officials don’t agree with his threat assessment level.
“While TdA members are present nationally, local authorities believe their presence in Utah is not extensive,” said the Utah Department of Public Safety, adding that the state’s largest criminal gangs continue to be others, including “Bloods and Crips.”
The aforementioned former DHS official said Lee’s proposal is “fascinating,” and it shows how the anti-immigrant push in states is opening up Republicans to supporting common-sense gun-safety measures.
“If you like that from a national security perspective, then you shouldn’t object to young men with mental health problems being prohibited from having guns,” the source said.
Lee doesn’t see it that way.
“I can see people saying it’s the gun control thing coming from Republicans,” he acknowledged. “But I view it as citizen vs. non-citizen.”
One Last Thing
It can feel like every level of public life has become closed to immigrants, but that’s not the case.
In Houston Wednesday, community members and advocates gathered to express solidarity with their immigrant neighbors in a rally they called “From Houston with Love.”
The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops thanked Pope Francis this week after the Holy Father said mass deportations “will end badly.”
In Scranton, Pennsylvania, local groups and universities plan to host a prayer vigil for immigrants and refugees on Monday.
And in Los Angeles, immigrant-rights activists have announced they will disrupt planned ICE raids.
Thank you Adrian. This is an incredibly disturbing article that should be read by every American. Is this what we have come to? Enlisting citizens as bounty hunters and snitches? Targeting children? What next, yellow stars for all immigrants? Have we no decency or compassion anymore? Weren't they once considered Christian values? Aren't we all the children of immigrants who came to this country for a better life? I am a senior citizen and I can see now there has always been an underlying darkness within this county, but never has it been so powerful or dominant in my lifetime. I have served my country my entire life - proudly - but right now I feel a great deal of shame as an American.
Man, this feels like it's going to get worse before it gets better. They're so high on their own supply right now that I'm afraid it's going to take the economy crashing to snap them out of it.