This story is part of “Trump Two: Six Months In,” our series taking stock of the administration’s efforts to reshape immigration enforcement and criminal justice.
When Alabama lawmakers passed a sweeping anti-immigration bill in 2011, backlash was swift. Immigrant advocates warned that Latinos were fleeing the state, fearing arrests for their status or for "harboring" undocumented people. And some business leaders condemned the law after police arrested German and Japanese car executives for not having their licenses on them, a practice intended to funnel undocumented people from police stops into deportation proceedings.
Civil rights groups sued, and courts overturned much of the law as unconstitutional. Activists thought the effort was behind them. But this year, it’s come roaring back. In May, Alabama established a new crime for transporting undocumented immigrants into the state.
Alabama is one of 37 states that have enacted a combined total of at least 104 immigration-related laws in 2025, according to an analysis of data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. The laws reflect a nationwide crackdown on immigration galvanized by the Trump administration, with dozens of statutes creating new restrictions and penalties around employment, voting, education, driver’s licenses, public benefits and other aspects of life for non-citizens.
Republican-Led States Have Passed Most New Immigration Laws in 2025
States enacted dozens of new immigration-related statutes in 2025 that increase policing and restrict voting and ID cards for non-citizens.
Lawmakers are paying special attention to the role of state and local policing in immigration enforcement, passing at least 34 laws this year that encourage these agencies’ cooperation with federal authorities, criminalize aid to undocumented immigrants, create state immigration enforcement bureaus and more. As of July, the number of these new laws is more than double the tally of similar laws enacted in all of 2024.
In at least four states — Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Idaho — new strict anti-immigration laws are similar to ones in other states that courts have already struck down for encroaching on federal immigration enforcement. But Republican lawmakers and governors, vowing support for President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, advanced the bills anyway.
These laws come at a time when legal scholars say the U.S. Supreme Court could be more receptive to state anti-immigration statutes.
“I think it's possible that the Supreme Court is changing enough, or has changed enough in terms of its makeup, there's going to be more room for state criminal laws that are close to federal immigration laws,” said Hiroshi Motomura, a law professor at the University of California Los Angeles. “But who knows where that line is going to be drawn.”
NCSL’s database includes bills and amendments passed into law with a governor’s signature and resolutions approved by a state legislature. Its tracking dates back to 2008, allowing for comparison of similar laws over time.
When Frank Barragan, an organizer with the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, learned that the state had passed a law mirroring one that courts had already struck down, he said his “arms were full of chills… it was sickening.”
Barragan said Alabama activists are preparing to support the state’s 200,000 foreign-born residents, but the challenges are greater now than they were 14 years ago. “We're not fighting just the state of Alabama,” he said. “We're fighting the entire administration.”
New laws passed in Tennessee and Alabama expand the scope of immigration enforcement by targeting individuals and groups that assist undocumented people.
As of May, charitable organizations in Tennessee that house unauthorized immigrants can be held liable if those tenants commit crimes. Another law allows prosecutors to charge people, including U.S. citizens, with felony “human smuggling” if they conceal undocumented people from authorities for “commercial advantage or private financial gain.”
“It’s just basically a way to make sure that Tennessee is not a hospitable place for illegal aliens,” said Memphis State Sen. Brent Taylor, who co-authored both laws. “If they want to operate and live in this country, they should find another state.”
Immigrant rights groups sued in June, arguing that the law is so broad that it criminally implicates family members and roommates of current or formerly undocumented people, as well as landlords, charities and houses of worship that offer migrants shelter. The law went into effect on July 1 and remains active while legal challenges continue.
Taylor co-authored another law facing legal pushback. Senate Bill 6002 allows Tennessee prosecutors to charge elected officials with felonies and face 1–6 years in prison for voting in favor of “sanctuary city” policies that seek to protect immigrants from deportation. In an ongoing federal lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union said this is “the first known instance in American history where a state has imposed felony liability on local officials simply for the viewpoint expressed in their votes.”
Few precedents exist for the laws passed in Tennessee and Alabama this year. In one example from 2023, Florida amended its human smuggling statute to include the transportation of immigrants lacking legal status. An injunction on the law remains in place. A lawsuit has yet to be filed against Alabama’s similar bill, which goes into effect in October.
Other new laws create crimes specifically targeting undocumented immigrants, in a way that critics say gives people criminal records to more easily justify their deportation.
Trump has pledged to deport “the worst of the worst,” yet most people that ICE detains have no criminal convictions. But new state laws in Florida and Idaho criminalize immigrants just for being undocumented.
Under federal law, entering the country without authorization is a misdemeanor offense that historically has been rarely charged. Being present in the country without proper documentation, including overstaying a visa, is a civil violation rather than a crime. Visa overstays are estimated to be the most common form of illegal immigration.
In March, Florida enacted Senate Bill 4-C, which goes further than federal law by creating a new crime for entering the state as an undocumented person, with a minimum penalty of nine months in jail. A similar recent law from Idaho establishes crimes for illegal entry into the state and for trafficking migrants across the border. A federal judge blocked it in April.
Adam Cox, an immigration law professor at New York University, said the new laws let police arrest undocumented people who have committed no other crime in the state. “It allows the state that the local cop is in to say, ‘Aha, there's a state crime I can now arrest you for that’s going to put you in the deportation pipeline.’”
If courts eventually uphold these laws, it would effectively expand the immigration enforcement network down to beat cops on traffic duty.
Judges have blocked similar laws in four other states in the past two years, relying on a 2012 Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. United States that reinforced the authority of the federal government — not states — to oversee immigration enforcement. But in a more recent 2020 decision, Kansas v. Garcia, the Supreme Court allowed Kansas to criminally charge non-citizens for filing false tax forms, even though a similar federal offense exists.
Civil rights groups sued Florida over its new law, and a federal judge blocked police and prosecutors from enforcing it while the case continues. But amid defiant directives from the Florida attorney general, some officers continued making immigration arrests for more than a month. At least 27 people were arrested after the judge’s order, a recent Marshall Project investigation found.
Among them was Juan Aguilar, who got into a fender bender in late May, was arrested by deputies, transferred to ICE custody and deported in a little over one week. By the time the court corrected its error, he was already in Mexico.
“Not everyone who is there is a criminal; a lot of us are good people,” Aguilar told The Marshall Project in Spanish. “But they treat us all the same.”
States are also passing new laws that ramp up cooperation between police and federal immigration officials.
On Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order expanding the 287(g) program, which allows police to partner with federal immigration authorities by joining task forces, administering warrants or transferring detainees from local jails to federal custody. Since then, eight states have enacted laws encouraging or requiring participation in the program, and more than 600 law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have signed new partnership agreements, according to a Marshall Project analysis of data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In New Hampshire, Belknap County Sheriff William Wright was the first sheriff in the state to enter into such a partnership, which began in February. Wright described it as “another tool in the toolbox” for deputies, who can now detain people who have federal immigration warrants against them. Now, 12 law enforcement agencies in New Hampshire have entered into the federal agreements.
The Marshall Project found at least eight states, including New Hampshire, that banned sanctuary policies this year. Meanwhile, five Democrat-led states passed laws restricting cooperation with immigration authorities or banning their entry into schools and other locations.
New Hampshire state Rep. Ross Berry, a Republican from Hillsborough who co-authored the state’s sanctuary ban, said his constituents are blue-collar workers struggling with inflation and competing against undocumented immigrants for work. Berry said his immigration policies are popular among his voters.
“My electorate loves it,” he said. “I’ll definitely be putting it out there when I run for re-election.”
Not all law enforcement leaders agree that immigration enforcement aids their work. The police chief in Hollis, New Hampshire, spoke out against the state’s anti-sanctuary law for opening up officers to liability and hurting police-community relations. He retired before the bill was enacted.
In La Vergne, Tennessee, police said the aggressive immigration efforts are scaring people away from calling for help during emergencies. In May, a six-month-old died after the baby’s caregiver, an undocumented person, was too afraid to contact emergency services, according to La Vergne Police Chief Christopher Moews.
“If I have people who are afraid to come forward and provide a witness statement to a shooting or a robbery, or even report a sexual abuse of a child, or things of that nature, because of their documentation status, that is not helping out public safety here,” he said.
Even if courts eventually strike down the states’ latest anti-immigration laws, groups that advocate for immigrants’ rights said the new measures send a signal to undocumented people, their families and their communities. “It doesn't matter if you've built a life here,” explained Stephanie M. Alvarez-Jones, an attorney with the National Immigration Project. “It doesn't matter if you've contributed to your community, or local economy, or the state economy. You are not safe and you are not welcome.”
The laws also draw a link between immigrants and criminality, even though research shows that undocumented people commit crimes at lower rates than the general public, and data does not support narratives of migrant crime waves.
Immigration attorneys and activists across the U.S. told The Marshall Project that their clients increasingly fear being profiled for their skin color or accent, even if they are lawful U.S. residents. As a result, many immigrants are staying indoors, refusing to drive, skipping work or leaving Republican-majority states altogether.
“They are mean and miserable statutes,” said Carlos Torres, policy director at the Hispanic and Immigrant Center of Alabama, in reference to the new laws. “They are not really looking to empower our community, but instead, are trying to cut the wings of people who can actually be very productive and who are here in community with us.”
