Chambana Sun

The Illinois House and Senate have approved a bill that would allow state law enforcement agencies to hire non-citizens as fully licensed law enforcement officers.

On May 18, the Illinois State Senate passed HB3571 with Senate Floor amendment 1, according to Edgar County Watchdogs. The amendment permits law enforcement agencies, including county sheriffs or municipal departments, to hire non-citizens as law enforcement officers so long as they are “legally authorized under federal law to work in the United States and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm, or who is an individual against whom immigration action has been deferred by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm.”

These officers would have the same authority as U.S. citizen officers to carry firearms and make arrests. On May 19, the House followed suit and passed HB3571. The bill passed with a 37-20 vote in the Senate, and a 100-7 vote in the House.

According to a press release, the Senate amendment allows non-citizens to be hired as long as they are “legally authorized under federal law to work in the United States and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm, or who is an individual against whom immigration action has been deferred by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm”

Illinois State Sen. Chapin Rose (R-51) opposes the bill and spoke out against the bill, one of the few lawmakers to do so.

"You have to actually change federal law for this to be legal," Rose said on the Senate floor, going on to say that the police power and the power to arrest is "the most important power that must be conferred with absolute concern for how it is employed and how it can be abused." Rose said to give "the power to arrest and detain a citizen of this state or any state in the United States to a non-citizen is a fundamental breach of democracy. It is antithetical to the police power of any state."

"This is a fundamentally bad idea. There's no fixing it, there's no amending it, there's no nothing. It's just a fundamentally bad idea," Rose said. “You cannot hand the power to arrest any citizen the United States, let alone the ones we represent here in Illinois, over to someone who's not a United States citizen.”