New Tennessee Law That Could Put Illegal Aliens In Prison For Life Signed By Governor Lee
Image Credit: capitol.tn.gov & canva
The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has signed into law a bill that allows courts in the state to increase criminal penalties up to life in prison without parole for illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes.
Sponsored by Senator Janice Bowling (R-Tullahoma-District 16) and Representative Monty Fritts (R-Kingston-District 32), the new law includes several key provisions:
• Enhances the penalty for illegal immigrants who commit a violent crime in Tennessee.
• Enhances the penalty for an illegal immigrant who commits a crime in Tennessee while in possession of a deadly weapon up to life in prison without parole.
• Enhances the penalty for any adult who commits a felony violent crime on a K-12 school campus in Tennessee.
• Allows a magistrate or judge setting bail and bond to take an individual’s residency status into consideration.
During the House proceedings, Rep. Monty Fritts (R-Kingston) outlined the four main components of the bill. Despite facing opposition, the bill garnered significant support from Republican lawmakers.
Opponents attempted to claim that the bill was “xenophobic, anti-immigrant legislation,” arguing that a crime should be punished the same no matter who commits it.
However, proponents say that the law will get illegal aliens that are already in the state illegally and that have come to the U.S. to commit even more crimes off the streets. They argue that with the federal government’s failure to keep these individuals out of the country, simply reporting them and/or deporting them would not guarantee they would not make a return visit to Tennessee in the near future.
For example, Kevin Castro-Garcia, the twice-deported Honduran national, was charged with the fatal shootings of two people in Nashville in October of 2023.
Fritts and Bowling managed to get HB1872/SB2770 passed in both the Tennessee House and Senate, despite the bill being taken off notice in the House Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee after being placed behind the budget.
Supporters are hopeful that the new law will prove to be well worth the funding required by acting as a deterrent to those illegally crossing the border into the United States with the intention of drug trafficking, human trafficking or other crimes.
The new law will go into effect on July 1, 2024.
Thank you Rep. Monty Fritts. Let us pray for complete enforcement of this law, not a ‘may’. The best answer would be to automatically DEPORT them immediately so American citizens are not paying for the convict’s livelihood. Send Biden the travel costs.
They would just come back. AND LIFE SHOULD MEAN LIFE, NO PAROLE, NO EARLY RELEASE. MAKE INMATES WORK, growing their own food.
Deportation is the most cost effective and best deterrent in dealing with those who have committed violent crimes against the citizens of the United States. Life in prison only serves to punish Americans financially by forcing them to pay for illegals health care, food, up and by giving them a place to live. Our prisons are nicer than many of their shanty’s and shacks! So much poverty!
Deportation doesn’t deter any of the people that cross the border illegally(and commit crimes) due to the fact many have already been deported and cross illegally again. Heck, there are many businesses, that want the illegals here, that actually pay the coyotes to bring them back(I’ve personally known of 3 instances where a business has done this and the state/loca law enforcement never appear to take any of the information I’ve provided seriously). Our only option, at this point, is to put them in prison to keep them away from us.
If the border was closed, wall built and patrolled deportation would be better, but it is not! Life without parole is best to keep them from committing anymore crimes. Plus a deterrent for others to come into TN to commit said crimes.
How about making it illegal for an illegal alien to come into the state of TN. Will the government demand all of these illegal aliens be released from prison when they release the next pandemic as they did with Covid?
If a Tennessean gets arrested are they going to be put in the same jail cell as these illegal aliens?
I disagree with both options…I say if an illegal alien commits ANY kind of crime revealing their illegal entry into our country should automatically get the death penalty!! Why feed & house these type of people…& that goes for all criminals…decrease the jail population!!! Go back to the Fathers form of punishment…STONE THEM TO DEATH…especially those who commit adultery!!
If we’re really serious about stemming illegal alien entry into this country, then we should stop destabilizing the countries from which these aliens fled and make their countries livable again so that they will want to return there. The U.S. bears heavy responsibility for the destabilization of these countries for almost two hundred years of the Monroe Doctrine where the U.S. took it upon itself to invade and ravish these countries the same way that the former Soviet Union did to Eastern Europe. The U.S. only cared about U.S.-run corporations and their native elites who simply wanted to ravish these countries with gang warfare, drugs, dictatorships, disappearances, and genocide. Let’s make it so that these aliens will actually want to return home.
Of course, then who will do the jobs that legal Americans don’t want to perform inside the U.S.?