Citizenship of arrestee; if accused is not committed to jail, arresting officer to ascertain. (HB1430)

Introduced By

Del. Dave Albo (R-Springfield)

Progress

Introduced
Passed Committee
Passed House
Passed Senate
Signed by Governor
Became Law

Description

Arresting officer to ascertain citizenship of arrestee. Supplements the existing law that requires sheriffs to make a query into legal presence when a person is "taken into custody" at a jail. This bill expands such inquiries by requiring inquiries of everyone arrested, independent of whether they were taken into custody at a jail and requires that an arresting officer inquire of every arrestee whether he (i) was born in a country other than the United States and (ii) is a citizen of a country other than the United States and that, if the person responds he was born in another country and is not a citizen of the United States, the officer shall make an immigration alien query to the Law Enforcement Support Center of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and shall communicate the results of any immigration alien query to the Central Criminal Records Exchange of the Department of State Police in a format approved by the Exchange. Read the Bill »

Outcome

Bill Has Failed

History

DateAction
11/02/2010Committee
11/02/2010Prefiled and ordered printed; offered 01/12/11 11100625D
11/02/2010Referred to Committee for Courts of Justice
01/19/2011Assigned Courts sub: #3 Immigration
01/24/2011Impact statement from DPB (HB1430)
01/28/2011Subcommittee recommends reporting with amendment(s) (5-Y 1-N)
02/04/2011Reported from Courts of Justice with substitute (16-Y 4-N) (see vote tally)
02/04/2011Committee substitute printed 11105054D-H1
02/06/2011Read first time
02/07/2011Read second time
02/07/2011Committee substitute agreed to 11105054D-H1
02/07/2011Engrossed by House - committee substitute HB1430H1
02/08/2011Read third time and passed House (72-Y 27-N)
02/08/2011VOTE: PASSAGE (72-Y 27-N) (see vote tally)
02/09/2011Constitutional reading dispensed
02/09/2011Referred to Committee for Courts of Justice
02/11/2011Assigned Courts sub: Immigration
02/22/2011Left in Courts of Justice

Video

This bill was discussed on the floor of the General Assembly. Below is all of the video that we have of that discussion, 2 clips in all, totaling 3 minutes.

Comments

Laura Dely writes:

My Unitatarina Universlist faith calls me to defend human rights of all, including those who come to our country desparately seeking work of any kind to support their families. How can we not see the basic humanity of the men who huddle at strip malls and worker centers hoping to get a day's work doing anything they can get? Is this not reminiscent of Depression era soup lines? Why do we hate the poor and want to sweep them away?
Until we citizens of the United States demand and receive comprehensive immigration reform we should not impower our police with federal powers to handle our immigration woes. Where would we house such undocumented detainees?
We can look to the example of Prince William County that quickly found it had no place to hold all of the detainees it had arrested when it enacted similiar police policies, and it had to find money to feed all of these detainees, and ICE never came to pick them up, probably because they didn't want to have to pay to deport them, another enormous cost we the taxpayers would have to bear.
In today's (11/07/10) NYT Page 1 article reports that House Republicans are gunning to cut state budgets. We are already cut to the bone - if they get this past the senate, I'm reasonably certain the President would veto -- but what if in this crazy mad hatter world such cuts came through after Virginia enacted such policies? Would we cut schools funding, or Medicaid, or TANF? (We are already least of all 50 states in TANF funding.)
No -- we must stand together against such foolish, costly policies represented in HBs 1430 and 1421 and SB 256. And let's think about improving our economy via infrastructure projects that would inmprove our stormwater management, and improve our energy management systems.

VACOLAO, tracking this bill in Photosynthesis, notes:

Under a Virginia law enacted in 2008, Virginia is one of only two states in the nation that checks the immigration status of every person arrested and taken into custody for a crime and presented at the jail. No evidence has been shown that this expansion of that mandate makes sense, and the fact is that it would result in persons having their status checked twice, take officers off the street and make us all less safe without any concommitant benefit. VACOLAO opposes this bill.

Michael Plumb writes:

Expanding and mandating the role of local and state law enforcement to further inquire into an arrested person's immigration status is a waste of time, redundant, AND an underhanded tax increase to the citizens of Virginia. We don't need local authorities wasting their valuable time and our valuable tax dollars for Mr. Albo's witch hunt of anyone without pale white skin. The current law gos plenty far enough and needs to be left alone.