GOP threatens 2026 ballot measure after Hobbs vetoes Arizona ICE Act

Despite multiple cases of U.S. citizens being wrongfully detained, Republican lawmakers in Arizona want to force law enforcement agencies, city officials and even school leaders to make it easier for ICE to deport people — and they’re threatening to go to the ballot to do it. 

Last week, Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a GOP priority bill, known as the Arizona ICE Act, that sought to force state and local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. On Monday, Republican backers of the bill lashed out at the Democratic governor’s rejection of that idea, and warned that the legislation might return in 2026.  

Senate President Warren Petersen, who sponsored the bill, lambasted Hobbs for playing “political games” and said the bill’s backers are considering going to voters next year to circumvent her veto stamp. 

Senate Bill 1164 would have mandated that every police department and sheriff’s office in the state comply with ICE detainers. Also known as immigration holds, detainers are written requests from ICE to law enforcement agencies to hold a person in custody for an extra 48 hours after their scheduled release time — even if that person hasn’t been convicted of any crime — to determine whether they’re eligible for deportation.

Hobbs vetoes Republican bill that would have brought ICE agents into Arizona schools

Under the vetoed legislation, law enforcement agencies that didn’t follow its mandates could have faced investigations and lawsuits from the Arizona attorney general. 

ICE detainers have become a focus of GOP politicians in multiple states, despite the murky legal basis behind them that has led to U.S. citizens being forced to endure prolonged imprisonment. 

Detainers don’t require probable cause and are often erroneously issued. Just last week, a Georgia native spent the night in a Florida jail under an ICE hold, despite his mother showing a judge his birth certificate. The judge said she was powerless to release the man because Florida law requires law enforcement agencies to comply with ICE detainers. 

And that case isn’t an isolated or recent occurrence either: between 2002 and 2017, ICE wrongly identified as many as 2,840 U.S. citizens as being eligible for deportation.

The Arizona ICE Act also sought to bar state government, city councils, law enforcement agencies and even school boards from adopting any policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It is currently optional for Arizona law enforcement agencies to comply with ICE detainers

Some cities and law enforcement agencies in other states have passed ordinances or chosen to refuse to obey ICE detainers, in light of court rulings that determined imprisoning people beyond their scheduled release date is unconstitutional and lawsuits filed after detainers were issued against U.S. citizens.. 

During an April 21 news conference, Petersen pointed to the success of the Secure Border Act as proof that Arizonans both want the state to take a more active role in enforcing federal immigration laws and would welcome the Arizona ICE Act.

“Arizona’s voters spoke loud and clear last November when they overwhelmingly passed the Secure the Border Act,” he said. 

Neary 63% of Arizona voters cast their ballots last year in favor of Proposition 314, the Secure Border Act. Republicans sent that proposal to the ballot after Hobbs vetoed similar legislation. Along with enacting new penalties for the sale of lethal fentanyl and the use of false documentation to apply for jobs or public benefits, the act made it a state crime for migrants to cross the southern border anywhere but at an official port of entry. 

Since its passage, Republicans have touted it as a voter mandate and latched onto it as the motivation behind the party’s aggressive border policies. 

Who do ICE detainers actually catch? 

Petersen sold the Arizona ICE Act as a bid to support President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda and he linked immigrants with criminality to justify tightened relationships between local and federal authorities. 

“Gang members, child sex traffickers, murderers, rapists, drug dealers, human smugglers and terrorists were allowed to freely walk across our borders into the United States under the Biden administration,” he said. “President Trump has finally come to put a stop to this madness.” 

Encounters at the country’s southern border reached record highs during the Biden administration, but federal immigration authorities responded by ramping up deportation efforts. Between January 2021 and November 2024, approximately 4.6 million people were expelled from the country. By comparison, Trump oversaw 2.1 million removals during his first term. 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials estimated that the majority of people encountered at the country’s southwest border between February 2021 and October 2023 were removed. 

Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes, a Republican who oversees a county that is more than four hours away from the Arizona-Mexico border and who has been a frequent proponent of anti-immigrant legislation, also claimed that the Arizona ICE Act simply seeks to ensure that people who have committed crimes are detained. 

“You have very bad people that live in communities that just haven’t been caught yet, and they’re subject to removal,” he said. 

Proponents of the Arizona ICE Act have frequently employed xenophobic language to frame immigrants as criminals and call for the legislation’s passage. 

Advocates claim that compliance with ICE detainers will keep such criminals off the street, despite evidence that the vast majority of detainers are actually issued for non-violent offenses. An analysis of detainers issued in the first two months of the Trump administration by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that 72% of people who were subject to an ICE detainer had no previous criminal record. 

And out of the 17,972 ICE holds, only 30 were targeted at convicted rapists and just 65 were issued for people who committed murder. 

Price tag isn’t a problem

Petersen waved off concerns about due process violations because of wrongly issued detainers, saying that he trusts law enforcement agents to do their best. 

Plus, he said, we should expect the police will make errors, and it’s not a big deal when they make mistakes. 

“Any time law enforcement is in a situation, there’s a potential that they don’t enforce the law properly, so that’s no different than any other situation,” he said. “Of course, law enforcement gets it right 99% of the time. Sometimes they don’t, and there’s consequences to that: litigation and the government ends up settling a lawsuit. But I trust law enforcement to properly enforce the law almost all of the time.” 

If the Arizona ICE Act ends up on the ballot and voters approve it, taxpayers may have to foot the bill for legal challenges that arise from unconstitutional detainments. 

The legislation also presents other costs that the GOP-majority legislature has yet to address. Along with requiring local sheriffs offices and police departments to hold onto people in custody for longer than the initial arrest warrants, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry would also be required to house people under an ICE hold. 

A fiscal impact report by legislative budget analysts concluded that, while some of the expenses could be covered by the federal government, new costs for the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Safety and local law enforcement agencies could still be incurred. Additionally, the state would have to pay for any investigations and lawsuits launched by the state attorney general to enforce the bill’s mandates. 

Before lawmakers send the Arizona ICE Act to the 2026 ballot, they would first need to identify a way to pay for its expected costs. The Arizona Constitution requires ballot measures that are projected to increase government spending to come up with funding that isn’t pulled from the state’s general operating fund. 

Whether they will actually do so is an open question. Last year, GOP lawmakers failed to account for that issue when they sent the Secure Border Act to the ballot, and are now facing a lawsuit that could potentially invalidate it. 

But, according to Petersen, there is no funding shortfall in the Arizona ICE Act. 

“There’s no costs to honoring a detainer,” he said. 

Who should set AZ, local policies? 

In her veto letter, Hobbs said her biggest issue with the Arizona ICE Act was that it gave federal immigration authorities unfettered power over how local officials and law enforcement agencies approach the enforcement of immigration laws, forcing them to comply even if they disagree with the White House’s directives. 

It’s bad public policy, she said, to “tie the hands” of law enforcement officials. 

“Arizonans, not Washington, DC politicians, must decide what’s best for Arizona,” the Democrat wrote.

But Rhodes defended the proposal as necessary to ensure that city council officials don’t wade into law enforcement issues.

“We do not need the (local) governments putting wedges or barriers in between information sharing or cooperation between (law enforcement) agencies,” he said. 

Rhodes, who is serving his second term as sheriff of Arizona’s most Republican county, said that the state needs to step in when other sheriffs choose to limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. 

“The state should be telling those sheriffs: If you have somebody in your custody and that person has committed a crime, particularly a violent crime, and they are subject to removal from this country, they must notify the immigration authorities,” he said.