The North Carolina General Assembly has seen a number of bills being introduced ranging from education policy to governmental powers. This week, North Carolina Republican Senators in the Rules Committee moved along legislation that: prohibits phones from being on during classroom instruction, requires state officials to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and restricts the state’s Attorney General from taking legal action against the executive orders of President Donald Trump.
Senate Bill 55 would require schools in the state to prohibit the use of cell phones during class time. The sponsor of the bill cites the distractions phones cause in classrooms as a reason this bill needs to be put in place. Critics worry about the danger this bill poses for a student in an emergency, either by making it so a student can’t contact help in a dire situation or making it take additional time to ready a phone to call for help.
Senate Bill 58, one of the more discussed bills, takes aims at the power of Democratic Attorney General Jeff Jackson. This year Jackson has entered the state of North Carolina in four lawsuits against Trump’s executive orders that he announced on his first day in office.
Senator Julie Mayfield points out that the four lawsuits all fall within Jackson’s right as Attorney General. “I’m just puzzled about what it is that we don’t like about what our attorney general is doing to help protect the jobs and the economy, to defend — which is his job — defend attacks on the jobs and the economy in North Carolina,” Mayfield said. She then posed the question of what happens if Jackson ignores the General Assembly.
The primary bill sponsor, Republican Sen. Timothy Moffitt, said that retaliation is possible. “I could contemplate that the action that this body could take would be to take Chapter 114, Section 2, and just completely zero it out, and that way, the Attorney General is a feckless, empty shell of a position that has no authority to do anything.”
Senate Bill 153 would require state law enforcement offices to enter into an agreement with ICE that states their cooperation with ICE and law enforcement to assist with the enforcement of Immigration policies.
This bill echoes the emphasis we are seeing from Republicans at the federal level on the urgency of immigration policy reform. Senator Buck Newton, a Republican co-sponsor of the bill, called it “the next step that the state needs to take to help support President Trump’s efforts to curb illegal immigration.”
While Republicans call the bill a necessity, Democrats and advocates ask them to consider the harm it will cause. Policy analyst for the ACLU, Samantha Salkin, argues that the bill would destroy the relationship between immigrants and law enforcement.
Senator Sophia Chitlik from Durham brought up an objection to a section of the bill that would prohibit public benefits from being used on individuals who are not U.S. citizens, pointing out the negative impact it may have on children who come from households where one parent is a U.S. citizen and the other is not.
Mario Alfaro, a policy director for El Pueblo NC, insists this bill will create distrust and harm the people who contribute much to the state. “Instead of protecting the state’s citizens, it will create distrust and increase insecurity for everyone,” Alfaro said. “More than 50% of farm workers are immigrants, and more than 35% of construction workers are immigrants. We urge legislators to support policies that protect immigrants and their contributions, not those that ignore or hide the fact that North Carolina’s economy needs immigrant workers”.
