ST. LOUIS (First Alert 4) — Lawmakers with ties to St. Louis are pushing new bills to create a bounty hunter program in Missouri. It would pay people to turn in people they think are residing in the U.S. illegally.
Senate Bill 72 was submitted on December 1 and is sponsored by Sunset Hills-based David Gregory, a House Representative who was elected to the State Senate in November. Gregory wants to pay Missourians up to $1,000 if they turn someone in.
First Alert 4 reached out to Gregory on Tuesday for an interview. He has not responded.
The first part reads that someone in the country illegally is prohibited from voting in any election, receiving any permit or license to drive, receiving any public benefit, and becoming a legal resident of this state.
The proposed bill also calls for the Department of Public Safety to develop the “Missouri Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program.” That would certify Missouri residents to be bounty hunters to find and detain immigrants without legal status in the state.
“This does not make life better in Missouri,” Local attorney Javad Khazaeli told First Alert 4 Investigates Tuesday.
He called the proposed legislation the “worst written bill I’ve seen,” and said to put a bounty on someone’s head because someone believes they are here illegally is incredibly dangerous.
“As a civil rights attorney that’s great for me,” Khazaeli explained. “It’ll take one week for a Puerto Rican who has been harassed. This is a classic demanding papers, you must have your papers everywhere. This is Nazi Germany stuff.”
Khazaeli is a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutor and said this program is a solution looking for problems.
“When I was at ICE, we had under the second Bush Administration, under George W. Bush, we had a program where we deputized local police officers to help,” Khazaeli shared. “That was a disaster many times because they didn’t know how to distinguish if someone was from the U.S. or not. A whole bunch of them thought Puerto Ricans were foreigners. This will be a big problem.”
The bill states the Department of Public Safety shall develop an information system for people to report violations, including a toll-free telephone hotline, email, and online reporting portal.
“There is no easier way to harass people of color than to allow a phone number where I can call and claim they are not here documented and expect police to crash through their doors,” Khazaeli shared. “This is ripe for abuse. This is purely harassment.”
The bill summary clearly states that any person who makes a report in which an illegal alien is arrested shall receive a reward of $1,000.
Khazaeli told First Alert 4 Investigates that the state’s attorney general and Republican state lawmakers don’t seem to care about fixing real problems and do things to grab headlines.
“Have we seen a major problem with unlawful immigration in Missouri?” Khazaeli asked. “Where you see people working are in all of our restaurants, all our construction sites, all of our farms, all of our golf courses, these are not jobs Americans are vying for.”
“If you have a system like this and you incentivize one restaurant to call another because they have some cooks, you will see businesses close, prices go up. This is a solution looking for problems,” he said.
A summary for SB 72 is on the Missouri Senate’s website.
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