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HARRISBURG -- With almost two months under his belt, President Donald Trump has begun to fulfill his campaign promises to address illegal immigration in the United States, and Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have taken notice.
A few lawmakers gathered in the state Capitol on Monday to proclaim their partnership with the Trump administration to end what they call the "illegal alien invasion" in Pennsylvania.
"For many years, I've been working with other state legislators across the country on trying to encourage our federal government to work with us rather than working against us to ensure that we are protecting the lives, liberty and the property of American citizens and those who are in our nation legally," said Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler. "With a new administration in (Washington) D.C., it gives us an opportunity to work with them and partner with them."
Metcalfe revealed a group of bills called the "National Security Begins at Home" package that includes legislation related to "sanctuary" cities and campuses, welfare benefits and jobs that he said creates incentives for individuals to migrate here illegally.
"We need to ensure that we're shutting off the faucets that attract illegals to Pennsylvania," he said.
The package of bills includes House Bill 856, which would require all Pennsylvania employers and government entities to enroll in the E-Verify program to confirm whether job applicants' Social Security numbers are valid. The program is maintained by the federal government.
Businesses that fail to comply and are caught employing undocumented workers would face a suspension of their state licenses, permits, registrations or certificates.
"This is just attempting to make sure that our employers in the commonwealth... are putting a good-faith effort into being certain that those who are working for them are authorized to be working here," said Rep. Robert Kauffman, R-Franklin.
House Bill 826, sponsored by Rep. Doyle Heffley, R-Carbon, would require that any state agency that administers welfare benefits run applicants and recipients' information through the Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlement program operated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to verify citizenship.
Heffley said the bill would cut down on the misuse of benefits by "gang bangers" and other "illegal aliens" who are using the taxpayer funds to buy drugs.
House Bill 28 and House Bill 14 would punish municipalities and campuses that consider themselves "sanctuary" locations by denying them state funding.
"If we want to be diplomatic, we can call them 'sanctuary campuses' but they're 'outlaw campuses.' They're campuses or universities that have come out and said that they're going to pick and choose the laws that they want to enforce and that they want to go by. That's not the way it works," said Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Schuylkill, who sponsored HB14.
There is no legal definition of "sanctuary" cities or campuses, however, most consider themselves to be jurisdictions that don't honor or prevent local law enforcement from complying with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers.
Detainers are written requests sent from ICE to local or state law enforcement agencies that ask that certain individuals be held for additional time after his or her release date in order to give ICE officials time to bring that individual into federal custody.
Another bill, which will be introduced by Rep. Ryan Warner, R-Westmoreland, would require that state and local law enforcement "fully comply" with ICE detainers.
Unlike most press conferences held in the Capitol Media Center, the lawmakers were joined by 15 Pennsylvania residents who stood in silent protest of the legislation.
Halfway through the meeting, they lined up in front of the speakers holding signs that read "alien invasion = paranoia," "immigrant lives matter" and "no human is an alien," among others.
Following the meeting, some divulged their outrage at the proposed policies and lawmakers' rhetoric.
"That abuse of language that stereotypes, particularly negatively in this situation, human beings. We're talking about human beings. And then they attach on the word 'invasion' so that they become even more alien-like, like Martians," said Mary Barnes of York.
Barnes said their language particularly invokes negative images of people of color, like Hispanic individuals, though many undocumented people in the U.S. who have overstayed their visas are Canadian and European.
There are 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., of which 5.85 million are from Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center. Of the top countries for visa overstays, Canada takes the top spot with 93,000 of 416,000 individuals who overstayed their visa in 2015, while more than 42,000 came from Mexico, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Barnes and her fellow York County resident Carol Stowell both fear the proposed legislation could lead to further racial profiling of people of color, the deportation of taxpaying, productive undocumented immigrants who aren't committing crimes and have familial ties to the state and lawsuits against municipalities who they say are protecting individuals' Fourth Amendment rights that protect them from unreasonable searches and seizures, including ICE detainers that are not court-issued warrants.
Andy Hoover and Elizabeth Randol of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania shared similar thoughts and expressed concerns about lawmakers not understanding the laws they are trying to enforce.
"(Warner) made a vague reference to a determination by the federal government, but that suggested that there is some kind of due process involved with ICE detainers. There is no judicial review on those detainers. It's just the executive branch asking 'Can you hold the person for two days? And we'll figure out if they have an immigration status.'
"That's incredibly problematic because they're holding people without cause," said Hoover, communications director for the ACLU.