Tennessee Republicans are advancing a bill that would establish a state-level crime for immigrants who remain in the state for more than 90 days after receiving a final federal deportation order. The proposal is part of the state’s extensive “Immigration 2026” agenda and is seen as a strategy to ignite a legal battle that could escalate to the U.S. Supreme Court, Newsweek reported.
“Established law dating back well over a century prohibits states creating their own immigration laws, but Tennessee legislators are attempting to create a state-level immigration regime with this bill that would lead to chaos and disorder throughout the country,” Spring Miller, senior legal director at the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), told Newsweek Friday afternoon.
“Language in the bill even suggests that the lawmakers themselves know this runs afoul of Supreme Court precedent, and undoubtedly, groups are prepared to fight this government overreach in the courts should it pass.”
Tennessee has joined a growing group of Republican-led legislatures that are challenging the federal government’s authority over immigration law. This follows similar actions by Texas, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, which have already enacted versions of Texas’s SB 4. The strict state-run deportation and reentry criminalization effort has already faced significant legal challenges.
The bill proposes to make it a Class A misdemeanor for an immigrant who is barred from entering the U.S., or who has been excluded, deported, or removed, to intentionally enter Tennessee. This would include individuals who left the country voluntarily after receiving final orders of removal.
Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth, the bill’s sponsor, described the proposal as a deliberate effort to challenge the long-standing precedent that prevents states from enforcing their own immigration laws.
“When someone has exhausted all their options, and they’ve been told to leave the country, it is illegal for them to stay, both under federal law, and if this bill passes, it would be a misdemeanor for them to enter in, or remain in, the state of Tennessee,” Lamberth told lawmakers during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
Pressed about whether the bill would be considered unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s 2012 ruling in Arizona v. United States, Lamberth was frank: “I like our track record with the U.S. Supreme Court.”
He highlighted the High Court’s recent tendency to support conservative social policies in Tennessee, such as the ban on gender-affirming care for minors and the abortion trigger law established after Roe v. Wade was overturned. That said, the legal landscape for immigration issues is more varied, involving both state and federal laws. Immigration has traditionally been the sole purview of the federal government, Newsweek noted.
Democrats, naturally, were angry over the measure. “Everything that I’ve read, everyone that I’ve talked to, said that this is currently unconstitutional,” state Rep. Gloria Johnson said, per the outletn.
She later accused the legislature of advancing a “Stephen Miller bill … that we know is unconstitutional” at taxpayer expense.
“Instead of funding Tennesseans’ basic needs, affordable healthcare, and quality education, taxpayer resources would be used to imprison people for simply being or passing through the state and having been issued a piece of paper that they may or may not have been aware of,” Miller told Newsweek.
“Furthermore, this bill is confusing and would be incredibly hard to enforce,” she added. “There is no centralized database that tracks everyone that has received a final order of removal, and someone with a final order of removal could be in the process of adjusting their status through established legal pathways.”
Lamberth defended that design as prudent, saying the bill “respects constitutional boundaries while ensuring we are prepared if states’ authority is restored.”
Legal scholars say Tennessee’s effort fits within a broader movement among Republican-controlled states to push federalism boundaries by creating parallel state immigration crimes in order to trigger a Supreme Court case.