The Immigration Topic Isn’t Going Away in Ohio

State representatives have been on a mission to combat illegal immigration in Ohio, and they’re not stopping any time soon. If anything, they’re ramping up their efforts with bills that have been introduced and passed this session.

State Rep. Josh Williams, a Republican who represents Toledo, recently introduced HB 26. According to the bill’s text, it would “require state and local authorities to cooperate with the federal government in the enforcement of immigration laws, to prescribe funding reductions for noncompliance, to name
this act the Protecting Ohio Communities Act, and to declare an emergency.”

As Williams shared in an interview with Fox News, localities will lose their state funding if they refuse to comply with federal immigration enforcement.

Disagreement is not an excuse for noncompliance, the bill makes clear, laying out how it’s for the attorney general to investigate whether there is compliance.

Williams also provided The Daily Signal with a statement on further motivation for his bill. “Ohio is taking a stand for law and order by ending dangerous sanctuary policies that put illegal immigrants ahead of American citizens,” he shared. “The Protecting Ohio Communities Act ensures that local governments cooperate with, not obstruct, federal immigration enforcement. I’ll always stand with law enforcement, protect our communities, and put American families first.”

The bill “will require our law enforcement departments to cooperate with federal immigration efforts,” the state representative explained during his interview with Fox News, as he also went after sanctuary cities in Ohio. Such cities would be defunded “if they have policies that restrict their agencies or employees from cooperating with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and other federal departments for the purposes of federal immigration enforcement in the state of Ohio.

Williams shared that the bill was driven by what he’s seen in cities such as Columbus, Cleveland, and his hometown of Toledo, which he says has “essentially become a sanctuary city.” As he also pointed out, Ohio has home rule authority, leading legislators to take “a very pointed approach that’s saying, ‘Look, if you want to have these sanctuary policies, we’re going to defund you. You’re going to have to raise those local tax dollars to support those type of policies here in our state.’”

That home rule authority, according to the state constitution, as Fox News mentioned, gives municipalities “authority to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws.”

Williams also addressed immigration from a federal perspective. In the clip above, he expressed hope “the federal government takes the same type of approach and applies conditional funding to our states who are refusing to cooperate and even sometimes obstructing our enforcement effort.”

That’s not the only way in which the federal government has been relevant for Ohio on this issue. As The Daily Signal reported last Wednesday, there has also been chatter that Columbus is one of several cities working with the federal government to lease office space for law enforcement. That office space may be used for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

Since that article was published, an ICE spokesperson has responded to The Daily Signal with a statement regarding such chatter.

“ICE continues to execute the President’s mandate to remove criminal illegal aliens from the U.S. While we cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future operational requirements,” the spokesperson shared.

Williams referenced immigration from a federal level further, as he is running to challenge Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat representing Ohio’s 9th Congressional District. He also took shots at the Biden administration on the immigration issue when sharing another clip from his interview.