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A Republican bill that would appropriate $50 million from the state general fund to the Arizona Department of Public Safety to enforce “border related crimes” and implement a measure voters approved last year cleared its first hurdle Monday afternoon.
But if it ultimately becomes law, it could trigger a constitutional challenge to the law that voters overwhelmingly backed in the November election.
That law, Proposition 314, makes illegally crossing the border a state crime, enabling local police to detain and arrest migrants. But the GOP lawmakers who crafted the measure and sent it to the ballot didn’t allocate any funding to enforce its provisions, even after sheriffs and other law enforcement leaders told them they needed money if they were going to be asked to enforce it.
Now that Prop. 314 won at the ballot box, Rep.Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, is pushing House Bill 2606 to provide funding to actually enforce its provisions.
“I think if we are going to ask law enforcement to perform additional duties, we need to have that money,” Nguyen told the House Committee on Public Safety and Law Enforcement when it considered his bill.
But doing so could be grounds for a lawsuit that aims to take down the entire law. The Arizona Constitution requires any ballot measure that increases state spending to provide money to pay for it — and says that money cannot come out of the state’s general operating account. Nguyen’s proposal would appropriate the $50 million from the state’s general fund.
No lawmakers in Monday’s committee spoke about the possible constitutional issues the funding could trigger, but there were repeated references to the bill’s goal of implementing Prop. 314 enforcement.
Scottsdale Republican Rep. Alexander Kolodin asked Navajo County Sheriff David Clouse at one point if he was ready to “carry out the will of the voters.” At another point in the hearing, Nguyen said that voters overwhelmingly approved of Prop. 314 and it needed to be enforced.
And Republicans rebuked concerns from Democratic lawmakers and reiterated that Prop. 314 was approved by voters.
“This proposition went to the ballot, went to the voters who passed this. Sixty-six percent of voters passed this,” Rep. John Gillette, R-Kingman, said, adding that “mixed-status families” are breaking the law and “can be arrested.”
Critics focused on the impact the money would have on immigrant families. Lan Hoang, operations director for the Arizona Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander for Equity Coalition, said her group was concerned about spending state money to separate mixed immigration status families.
Nguyen interrupted her during a tense exchange, and shot back that family separations happen “every day.”
“We separate families all the time. If my son committed a crime, he would be separated from me,” Nguyen said .
Rep. Lorena Austin, D-Mesa, shared Hoang’s concerns, saying the bill is written in a “very broad” way and that family separations have already seen an increase.
“It is a very complicated situation,” Austin said. “We have many people living in fear.”
President Donald Trump in the past has said he would be willing to deport mixed immigration status families.
The bill passed out of committee with one Democrat, freshmen lawmaker Kevin Volk, who won in a competitive southern Arizona district, voting yes on the measure. The bill must still pass the House Appropriations Committee before it can be considered by the full House of Representatives.
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