As 2025 legislative sessions power up across the country, red-state lawmakers who back President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans are pushing increasingly restrictive measures – bounty hunters, immigration traffic-stops, and limitations to healthcare, education and services that have long been provided by states to immigrants. The resulting policies and climate is putting immigrant families -- or people who look like immigrant families -- on high alert, reshaping immigration enforcement and further constraining everyday lives, the Washington Post reports, in a detailed breakdown of state immigration-related initiatives.
Missouri and Mississippi lawmakers have proposed allowing bounty hunters to detain undocumented immigrants and offering $1,000 rewards for tips that lead to arrests. A Tennessee lawmaker, meanwhile, wants his state to bill parents for enrolling undocumented children in public schools. He titled his effort the TRUMP Act — for the Tennessee Reduction of Unlawful Migrant Placement.
In the Midwest, Iowa and South Dakota lawmakers introduced bills requiring state driver’s licenses to indicate whether the driver is a U.S. citizen. Out West, Montana lawmakers would make immigration status checks a mandatory part of traffic stops there and compel employers to check the immigration status of those they hire.
“The thrust is costs and how do we help President Trump on the enforcement side?” said Andrew Good, director of state government relations at NumbersUSA, a right-wing group advocating for immigration restrictions. “It’s definitely exciting.”
Tim Storey, chief executive of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan research and training group, had predicted as much following Trump’s election in November.
(Here is Storey’s briefing on “hot topics and policy trends” from late last year.)
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott ordered last year 2024 that hospitals track the cost of treating undocumented immigrants. Now legislators are proposing going further, by fingerprinting undocumented migrant children, barring undocumented migrants from receiving taxpayer-funded legal aid, creating a Texas Border Protection Unit and giving state law enforcement the power to deport migrants stopped near the border.
In Florida, legislators have passed the Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy — another TRUMP Act — to create a state immigration czar with 150 staff and $500 million in funding, increase penalties for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, force law enforcement agencies to join detention efforts, offer bonuses to police who assist in raids and block in-state tuition for undocumented students. While Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed to veto the act as “weak” and “watered down,” state Sen. Joe Gruters said he and other GOP legislative leaders wrote it in consultation with the Trump administration and predicted it would ultimately become law. “I talked to the president and Stephen Miller and others in his administration to get technical guidance on their needs,” said Gruters, a former state GOP chairman and longtime Trump ally. “That’s our goal: to support the president.”
Though immigration enforcement has long been within federal authority, both Texas and Florida also passed sweeping laws last year — quickly copied by some conservative counterparts — to create state immigration crimes and compel local police to enforce them. Courts have blocked full enactment so far, most recently with an injunction in Iowa last week, and a federal trial is scheduled in Austin this summer. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the right-wing Center for Immigration Studies, and others believe that states do have authority in this arena. “They have a role,” he said. “They’re co-sovereigns.”
Other states are tracking costs associated with undocumented immigrants, asking immigrant parents to declare their children’s immigration status to public schools, and targeting “violent illegal immigrants.”