Is this a back-door way to allow state and local police to enforce federal immigration law?
Yes. State and local police with no immigration law training could claim new authority as enforcers of criminal law to decide when someone who “looks foreign” or “sounds foreign” has violated federal criminal immigration law. Couldn’t the federal government just use its prosecutorial discretion to not prosecute immigrants as felons? Yes, but do we really want Congress to enact yet another immigration law that is so overreaching and senseless that the best argument its supporters can make for it is that it would not be enforced? Would this do anything to solve our immigration problems? No. This provision would criminalize whole communities of people. Most Americans recognize the real solution lies in the opposite direction — providing immigrants with a reasonable mechanism to work their way out of the shadows and into the American dream.
