On Monday Indiana lawmakers upgraded an immigration bill to require sheriffs to honor immigration detainers, require hospitals to identify illegal aliens using Medicaid, and penalize employers that hire illegal labor.
State Rep. J.D. Prescott successfully amended Senate Bill 76 in committee Monday to incorporate key measures of a stronger enforcement bill he proposed in the House, known as the Fairness Act. The bill now goes to the full state House for a vote and then back to the Senate to accept the amendments.
“The goal is to get this into a bill where the state of Indiana can partner with the Trump administration and Tom Homan … doing everything we can as a state to assist in those efforts to honor detainer requests, assist ICE in getting these illegal immigrants out of our state and country and make sure that employers are doing the right thing by only hiring a legal workforce,” Prescot told The Federalist in a phone call.
Supermajority-Republican Indiana has lagged behind other conservative states in mandating cooperation with federal immigration enforcement after former President Joe Biden’s open borders admitted historic numbers of fraudulently present foreigners. U.S. border czar Tom Homan visited Indiana in October to support the Fairness Act after Republican Sen. Liz Brown refused to allow a vote on a similar proposal in spring 2025.
After getting a primary opponent, Brown sponsored SB76 in the current session. Prescott noted Brown accepted his friendly amendments and worked with him to improve SB76.
Eighteen states require law enforcement to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in some way, which the Indiana bill enhances. Texas has required this since 2017. Georgia passed an anti-sanctuary city law in 2024, as did Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee in 2025. Florida has required local police to cooperate with ICE in various ways for several years. The open borders advocacy group Immigrant Resource Legal Center said in May 2025 that Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Texas, and West Virginia have the strongest anti-sanctuary laws.
These and other Republican-run states are considering bills to strengthen state-level immigration enforcement assistance. Tennessee is considering a pace-setting group of bills that would require larger employers to use an E-Verify system, require court employees to cooperate with ICE, make ignoring a deportation order a state crime, and require state institutions, including public schools and motor vehicle offices, to track and report customers’ immigration status. Florida held an immigration enforcement-focused special session that considered similar legislation in 2025.
Indiana sits right next to sanctuary state and trafficking hub Illinois, which has banned local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE since 2017. Pew Research marked Illinois in the top 10 states for illegal border-crossing residents in 2023. Neighboring Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky also allow several sanctuary jurisdictions, although Ohio is also run by Republicans.
Legal Immigrants Oppose Enforcing U.S. Laws
During the House hearing on SB76 Monday, a four-hour parade of activists and self-described immigrants testified in favor of illegal immigration and called both the United States and law enforcement racist. Several witnesses opposing the bill added or enhanced foreign accents while pronouncing their names and foreign words. Some witnesses who said they were born in America and educated in U.S. schools could not speak standard English.
Foreign exchange and second-generation immigrant students told the Indiana Republicans funding their educations with public dollars to stop “legislating with privilege” and demanded “public recognition that America is a racist country.” One student quoted Martin Luther King Jr., arguing: “Racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation.”
“I am on my phone a lot, and all I see is ICE agents harassing citizens,” one man testified. Some students described peers as afraid to go to school, inadvertently accenting the need for increased immigration enforcement in Indiana to remove law-breaking foreigners.
“ICE agents who harass people are the real illegals,” said a high school student. A Latino activist told lawmakers using the term “illegal alien” is offensive because Americans illegally occupy “stolen land.” Numerous witnesses cited the ongoing Minneapolis riots in which authorities shot two rioters attacking law enforcement officers, insisting that rioters should be allowed to veto laws duly passed by Americans’ representatives. Others name-checked Nazis and the Holocaust.
During the hearing, local TV cameras and microphones focused on testimony from leftist activists such as Yaqoub Saadeh from the Indiana Muslim Advocacy Network, removing the TV microphone when bill supporters spoke. The Federalist reported in December, “A FAIR study found that in 2023 Indiana taxpayers spent $1 billion on illegal immigration from public school tuition to Medicaid, the same amount as a massive two-year budget hole the legislature had to resolve last session with higher taxes.”
Strengthening a Weak Bill
Before amendments in the Senate previously and then the House Monday, SB76 was weak on enforcing its provisions to the point it could have undermined existing law. The Federation for American Immigration Reform’s Shari Rendall noted the initial version of SB76 “guts the employment verification provisions” by merely requiring state officials to notify the federal government if they believe an employer knowingly hired illegal labor. The version that passed out of the Senate also effectively gave sheriffs immunity from prosecution for refusing to cooperate with ICE if they completed a state training.
SB76 also lacked immigration data-collection requirements and a provision letting the state attorney general sue sheriffs who attempted to hide sanctuary policies by not putting them in writing. These provisions were all in the Fairness Act, or HB 1039, that Prescott sponsored, and his amendments Monday added them to SB76, essentially fusing the two measures. Rendall and Blake Lanning from the Indiana attorney general’s office testified in favor of SB76 as amended in the House Committee Monday, as did members of Republican Gov. Mike Braun’s administration from Business Affairs and the Department of Corrections and the leader of Indiana’s Sheriffs’ Association.
“The governor’s office is working closely with Rep. Prescott to ensure the strongest possible immigration package reaches Gov. Braun’s desk for signature,” a spokesman for Braun emailed The Federalist Friday.
Braun has taken numerous steps to address illegal immigration since taking office last year. In August his office announced the state was making 1,000 prison beds available to assist ICE deportation operations and signing 287(g) task force agreements for state law enforcement to assist ICE operations.
‘Every State a Border State’
The America First Policy Institute, which is staffed by numerous former Trump administration officials, says the five states with the most 287(g) agreements as of June 2025 are Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. AFPI staff, including former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, have publicly supported Indiana’s Fairness Act.
“Due to massive, unprecedented illegal immigration, every state has become a border state — the urgency of removing criminal illegal aliens cannot be understated,” Cooper Smith, AFPI’s director of homeland security and immigration policy, told The Federalist via email. “Americans deserve safe communities and leaders who prioritize putting their citizens first, not foreign criminals.”
Indiana is also considering a measure to restrain foreign adversaries’ ownership of Hoosier land and some foreign students from national-security-sensitive programs. Illegal immigration was Hoosier voters’ top political concern in the 2024 election year.
