A GOP-backed bill that would criminalize blowing whistles to alert people to immigration agents, a tactic embraced by activists in Minnesota earlier this year, was rejected on Tuesday. But that failure is likely to be temporary, and the measure may still land on the governor’s desk.
The proposal would create a new state crime called “unlawful alerting,” and punish it with a class 1 misdemeanor, which carries with it a six-month jail sentence. Someone would be guilty of “unlawful alerting” if they communicate with another person about an impending arrest, including via verbal warnings, gestures, electronic communications or sounds like bells or whistles.
Critics say it risks looping in people who publish social media alerts about the presence of federal immigration agents throughout the Valley.
The bill is part of a push this year by Republican lawmakers to support the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and lash out at immigrant rights activists who have opposed it. Republicans have framed it as a necessary protection against foiled arrests, but Arizona law already penalizes the act of helping a person avoid prosecution or apprehension with a class 5 felony.
The proposal has sparked backlash from immigrant rights groups and led to a legal tussle over whether lawmakers have the right to ban people from the state legislature. A vocal protest of the bill organized by Living United for Change in Arizona resulted in a panel of Republican lawmakers briefly fleeing a legislative hearing room in February. That prompted Republican leadership to ban people suspected of being members of the group from the state legislature for the rest of the session. LUCHA quickly sued, arguing that doing so violated the civil rights of multiple people.
Unlike its acrimonious public reception, the bill has sailed through the legislature with the help of the GOP majority, but on Tuesday it was defeated simply because not enough Republican lawmakers were in attendance. The 29-22 vote in the Arizona House of Representatives was one shy of the number needed for a bill to pass in the 60-member chamber.
Hitting that threshold is normally an easy task for Republican-backed bills, because the party holds 33 seats in the House. But two members have recently resigned, and several more were absent on Tuesday. Cognizant of that, Republicans opted to preserve the legislation for a second try in the future. Rep. Cody Reim, R-Scottsdale, flipped his vote to against at the last minute in a procedural move that enabled him to call for reconsideration later.
But it will be at least four weeks before the bill can be revived: Lawmakers on Tuesday also announced they were leaving until June 1 amid a stalemate on the state budget with Gov. Katie Hobbs..
The effort to advance the bill is more symbolic, in the end. Even if it wins the approval of the House, it’s destined to meet Hobbs’s veto stamp. The Democrat has consistently rejected legislation that doesn’t earn bipartisan support.