This story is an installment in The Tennessean's Q&A series On the Issues, where we asked the leading gubernatorial candidates to weigh in on some of the most pressing issues Tennessee’s next governor will face.
Lawmakers this spring passed a wide-ranging package of bills designed to assist the Trump administration in carrying out the president’s immigration agenda.
Among the new laws, Tennessee now withholds state funding for local law enforcement agencies that do not have agreements with ICE, requires driving tests to be administered in English only, and requires proof of U.S. citizenship to access public benefits including food assistance and access to care at public hospitals.
We got responses from all four candidates polling over 1%: Republican
nominee U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Democratic nominee Jerri Green, independent candidate David Hatley and independent candidate Lauren Pinkston.
Here’s how each candidate plans to address immigration, if elected.
Had you been governor at the time these laws were passed, would you have signed them? Why or why not?
GREEN: No. Right now, Republicans in our state are going after people in our communities because of the way that they speak and their skin color. They're doing this to distract from their failed policies to help working families be able to put food on the table, pay their rent and get by without having to work multiple jobs. On the whole, immigrants have come to our country to escape violent conditions or to seek a better life and contribute to our communities. Our diversity is our strength, and it is wrong and immoral to continue targeting a vulnerable population as a scapegoat.
BLACKBURN: Absolutely, I would have signed these bills. Local law enforcement entering into 287(g) agreements with ICE, requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to receive public benefits and administering drivers’ tests solely in English are common sense policies that protect our communities from the scourge of Biden-era illegal immigration that continues to affect our families. But there is still more work to be done. As governor, I will fight to ensure existing immigration laws are enforced and work with the state legislature to keep our communities safe.
PINKSTON: No, not as written. I believe in secure borders and enforcing federal immigration law, and as governor I would work with federal authorities to do that just as our local law enforcement agencies have been doing across Republican and Democratic administrations. From an economic perspective, it is inefficient to address immigration by hunting down Black and Brown bodies on Tennessee streets. Not only does this approach put politics ahead of public safety and local control, it ignores the real driver of modern immigration. We must address businesses that are profiting off of migrant labor and exploitative employment if we want to secure our borders. From a constitutional perspective, it is illegal to transport anyone on U.S. soil without offering them due process to U.S. constitutional rights. This is state-sanctioned trafficking, and if the federal government can override our state’s sovereignty to uphold the Constitution, it can override any right afforded to every citizen in Tennessee. In my years fighting human trafficking, I saw how fear of law enforcement keeps victims and witnesses silent. Cooperation with ICE can't come at the cost of the trust that solves crimes. Our local law enforcement agencies are already stressed financially, and these laws hand counties new costs and paperwork without the money to pay for them. An English-only driver's test doesn't make our roads safer. Knowing the rules of the road does. It also sends the wrong message to the international companies that bring thousands of jobs to Tennessee while forcing taxpayers to pay for new tests, new test manuals and an overhaul of DMV policies. We keep Tennessee safer by investing in the recruitment and retention of well-trained law enforcement officers, and address immigration by creating practical paths to citizenship at the federal level, which both parties have failed to do when they hold majority rule.
HATLEY: Yes. Without a secure border, you don’t really have a country, and laws that aren’t enforced aren’t laws. Tennessee should have no sanctuary cities, and local law enforcement should cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.
What role does Tennessee as a state have in executing and enforcing federal laws? Do you feel it’s appropriate for state tax dollars to be spent on federal enforcement?
GREEN: No.The state's job is to focus on meeting the needs of Tennesseans: fixing our schools, maintaining our roads and lowering health care costs. Immigration is a federal responsibility. It is a misuse of hard-earned Tennessee tax dollars to spend state resources on behalf of federal immigration agents, especially while our own public services are starved for funding.
BLACKBURN: Illegal immigration directly impacts the lives of Tennessee families. The state has an obligation to Tennesseans to make certain that our communities are safe, and collaborating with the federal government on immigration enforcement fulfills that duty. All illegal aliens in Tennessee should be deported, and as governor, I will work to make that a reality.
PINKSTON: Tennessee has a responsibility to cooperate with federal law enforcement, especially when it comes to violent crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking. I spent years working alongside people fighting exploitation across borders, and I know that cooperation saves lives. But the Constitution draws a clear line. The federal government can't force states to carry out federal programs, and Tennessee shouldn't volunteer to pick up Washington's bill. Spending $221 million to rent out Hotel Indigo in downtown Memphis for 10 months for 14 federal agencies was little more than a short-lived power play. That same budget would have done wonders for the Memphis City Police Department that was already struggling having lost 50% of its law enforcement officers after 2020. I have drafted a four-page plan on how I will require federal agencies to report every single action taken on Tennessee’s sovereign land in order to ensure untrained federal agencies are not operating unchecked under my leadership. Washington has failed to fix immigration for decades. The answer is to hold Congress accountable, not to make Tennessee taxpayers pay for the federal government's job.
HATLEY: My focus is safety. It does cost money to cooperate with ICE, but it costs more to leave people here who commit crimes and then pay for the consequences: the crimes, the prosecutions and the imprisonment. And I’d work with the federal government to get Tennessee reimbursed for what it spends enforcing federal law.
If a person is living, working and raising a family in Tennessee, and has not committed any crime but is not lawfully present in the U.S. — do you feel they should be deported?
GREEN: No. Tearing apart families who are working hard, paying taxes and contributing to our local communities without breaking our laws is cruel, counterproductive and bad for our economy. We’re talking about a legal infraction that is on the same level as a driving infraction. The current system is set up in such a way that demonizes people for breaking rules that we have made almost impossible to navigate, so we need comprehensive, common-sense federal reform, not state-sponsored roundups that target peaceful neighbors.
BLACKBURN: For too long, foreign nationals have exploited our immigration laws, and it is time that we stop birth tourism to protect the integrity of American citizenship. I have worked in the Senate to halt this abuse of birthright citizenship and will continue to fight to stop this practice as governor.
PINKSTON: Breaking up families who are contributing to Tennessee doesn't make anyone safer, and it hurts our farms, our businesses and the children with citizenship left behind. I'll answer the question honestly: Because immigrants pay taxes and contribute to Tennessee’s economy, I believe it is fiscally unsound to prioritize deportations for contributing families when we have more pressing social issues concerning law enforcement. Deportation decisions belong to the federal government, not the governor, and Congress is overdue on creating a legal and affordable path to citizenship in the United States. Most Tennesseans want both a secure border and fairness for the neighbors they already know.
HATLEY: There should be work at the federal level on a process for people who have been here a long time, pay taxes and assimilate to have a path to legal status, but my job as governor is to enforce the law as it stands.
When a U.S. citizen child’s parents are deported, should the state bear the cost of reunifying the child with their parents? Or should the state bear the cost of keeping the child in foster care?
GREEN: The state should be focused on keeping families together, not creating or contributing to humanitarian crises that lead to these outcomes in the first place.
PINKSTON: The question should be what's best for the child, and in almost every case, children are better off with their parents. When a parent is deported, the decision about where their child lives should belong first to the family. Tennessee should make it easy for parents to name a trusted relative or guardian ahead of time, and our Department of Children's Services should work with consulates to safely reunite children with their parents when that's what the family chooses. Foster care should be the last resort, not the default. Our DCS system is already stretched thin, and putting a child in state custody when they have loving parents or relatives willing to care for them is costly for taxpayers and harmful for kids. From my work fighting human trafficking, I know children who move through foster care are more vulnerable to exploitation. Reunification usually costs far less than years in state custody. More importantly, it keeps a child with the people who love them.
HATLEY: Custody decisions in that situation are ultimately up to the parents and Tennessee’s child welfare system. In many cases the parents can bring their children with them or choose someone to take custody. But if a U.S. citizen child has no suitable adult willing to take custody, that child needs to be in foster care, and Tennessee should pay for it, because that child is an American citizen. We will not put a child on the street. I’d also seek reimbursement from the federal government for those costs.
Blackburn did not respond.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: On the Issues: How each governor candidate would handle immigration
