Dozens of sanctuary bills introduced, few advance in Congress

“We can stop this madness with the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act that passed out of this committee in March, and will be heard in the coming weeks by the House,” McClintock said at a hearing on sanctuary policies Tuesday.

The bill has several provisions. It would preempt state and local laws that restrict law enforcement cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it would redirect federal law enforcement grants from sanctuary jurisdictions to jurisdictions that cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. McClintock also said the bill would protect officers who cooperate with federal immigration authorities from legal retaliation and offer legal recourse to victims of crimes committed by migrants.

“Perhaps most important for families like that of Carissa Aspnes and Dalilah Coleman, it would allow victims to sue the jurisdictions for the damages caused by criminals that these officials deliberately released back into their communities,” he said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., however, said there was a reason the legislation won’t have seen the House floor for about half a year.

“[Republicans] passed a bill to force underfunded state and local jurisdictions to use more of their funds and resources to do the bloated federal government’s job of immigration enforcement,” Raskin said of McClintock’s bill. “That means cities and localities would have fewer officers, less money, and fewer resources to protect their communities from violent crime, guns, drugs, and drunk driving.”

“What’s worse,” Raskin continued, “our colleagues have proposed defunding police departments across America in any jurisdiction that decides that state and local governments and not ICE should get to decide how state and local police departments are governed and run.”

Raskin said that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and other Republicans realized the bill and others like it are “terrible policy” and that’s why Johnson has kept it from being presented to the full chamber.

“Their policies are so divisive, so toxic, so purely symbolic and off-point that even Speaker Johnson won't put them on the floor,” Raskin said.

The Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act is one of a few pieces of sanctuary legislation that have made it out of committee during President Donald Trump’s second term. At least two others – one concerning sanctuary cities and small business and the other, the End Sanctuary Cities Act of 2026 from the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham – have passed out of committees. The former actually passed the House largely along party lines but was immediately sent to a Senate committee for review, where it has stayed since June 2025. Graham’s bill was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar in February, putting it among the measures the full Senate could take up but not guaranteeing it time on the Senate floor. It has seen no further action since.

Besides Raskin’s argument, there is also Supreme Court precedent that some say can complicate efforts to craft federal legislation targeting sanctuary policies.

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says that any powers it does not expressly grant to the federal government or prohibit to the states remain with the states. The Supreme Court later developed what has been called the anti-commandeering doctrine based on that amendment, in a 1997 court case.

“The federal government may neither issue directives requiring the states to address particular problems, nor command the states’ officers . . . to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program,” wrote the late Justice Antonin Scalia in Printz v. United States.

In other words, states cannot be mandated to act as an agent of the federal government or be forced to carry out federal programs.

The Cato Institute’s Director of Immigration Studies David Bier thinks that passing a federal law that compels state and local law enforcement to aid federal authorities in immigration enforcement would set a dangerous precedent.

“Once you say the federal government can mandate and coerce the states to do what the federal government wants – the end of that principle is, whoever's in power gets to decide what all 50 states do,” Bier told The Center Square. “And then you're, you're really ending, you know, the 50 laboratories of democracy and the whole idea of federalism. Ultimately, it erodes liberty and will lead to a much more powerful government.”

Another way Republicans have tried to come at the issue of sanctuary policies, sometimes rather than restricting the state and local laws themselves, is through funding, which McClintock’s bill also does. In 2025 and 2026, Republicans have introduced bills curtailing certain federal funds to jurisdictions with sanctuary policies like the No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act, the No Community Development Block Grants for Sanctuary Cities Act, the No Congressional Funds for Sanctuary Cities Act or the No DOT Funds for Sanctuary Cities Act, among others.

But Bier said this strategy also faces some potential problems.

“Could they condition funds that are related to law enforcement on helping federal government in their law enforcement efforts? Maybe? There’s not really any clear guidance on it,” he said.

The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that Congress can use its Spending Clause power to encourage states to do something it might not be able to require them to do directly. In 1987, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law that withheld some federal highway funding from states that didn’t adopt a minimum drinking age of 21.

However, the Supreme Court has refuted other attempts at controlling state policy through federal funding because it determined those attempts had crossed the line from encouraging adoption of federal policy to coercing it.

In 2012, for example, the Supreme Court rejected a part of the Affordable Care Act that required states to expand their Medicaid programs as part of the Obamacare rollout or risk losing all of their federal Medicaid funding, finding that the threatened loss of existing Medicaid funds was so substantial that it amounted to unconstitutional coercion.

Whatever constitutional challenges Republican proposals may face, Democrats do not appear to have introduced their own legislation either restricting sanctuary policies directly or restricting funding to sanctuary jurisdictions, though some have occasionally supported Republican measures that have come before them for a vote.