Republican U.S. Rep. Mary Miller helped ignite a
firestorm over the weekend of July 29 when she expressed her disgust on social
media with Gov. JB Pritzker.
Miller (no relation) claimed on Twitter that Pritzker had
signed a bill late on a Friday afternoon “to allow illegal immigrants to become
police officers, giving non-citizens the power to arrest citizens in our
state.”
Miller continued by claiming: “No sane state would allow
foreign nationals to arrest their citizens, this is madness!” Her more
well-known Republican colleague Lauren Boebert amplified the issue the next day
and Fox News picked up the ball and ran with it. The rest of the right-wing
media soon followed and a typical feeding frenzy ensued.
Trouble is, Rep. Miller’s own husband, state Rep. Chris
Miller, R-Oakland, (also no relation), voted “Yes” on the House’s initial
version of the bill, which would’ve allowed non-citizens to become police
officers.
Oops.
House Bill 3751 cleared the House on a unanimous roll
call March 24. It specifically struck out an existing state law which
prohibited sheriffs and law enforcement from employing non-citizens as law
enforcement officers. The bill then added language allowing those non-citizens
who are “legally authorized to work in the United States under federal law,”
and who received federal approval to “obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise
possess a firearm,” to become law enforcement officers.
The bill was supported by various groups, including the
Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, and passed 101-0. One of the bill’s chief
co-sponsors was Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park, a Donald Trump-supporting
police officer.
After the bill arrived in the Senate, its sponsor added
an amendment allowing people, “against whom immigration action has been
deferred by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process,” to also become police
officers.
Sen. Dan McConchie, R-Hawthorne Woods, the former Senate
Republican Leader, voted for that version, but all other Senate Republicans
opposed the bill as amended, as did two Democrats, Sens. Patrick Joyce, D-Reddick,
and Willie Preston, D-Chicago.
Most all House Republicans stood firm during their
chamber’s motion to concur with the new Senate amendment, including House
Republican Leader Tony McCombie. Not one member of McCombie’s leadership team
voted against the motion, which passed 100-7. However, seven of the eight
members of the House’s self-declared Freedom Caucus voted against it, including
Rep. Miller. The eighth member, Rep. David Friess, R-Red Bud, had an excused absence.
Pritzker eventually pointed out on Twitter that House
members, “including those who are now complaining about it,” had voted for the
bill before the Senate Republicans “started spreading lies.”
State Rep. Miller responded to the governor online by
claiming his own vote against “legislation allowing non-citizens to arrest
actual citizens,” paled in comparison to Pritzker’s “blatantly attacking the
Consitional [sic] right of honest citizens to bear arms.”
But, again, state Rep. Miller did indeed vote to allow
“non-citizens to arrest actual citizens.” His spouse, the congressperson,
tweeted at Pritzker the same day that “Giving foreign nationals the power to
arrest US citizens in Illinois is not ‘common sense.’” Ms. Miller should’ve
maybe had a talk with her husband last spring.
As you might imagine, several House Republicans are eager
for this particular news cycle to end. It’s enraging the base, and there’s some
worry that it could lead to some Republican primary challenges.
But Leader McCombie went on a southern Illinois radio
station WJPF last week to defend her fellow Republicans who voted for the bill.
“Every single [House] Republican, all 40 of us, voted for
this bill,” McCombie told host Tom Miller (also no relation). “And that is
because what the media is saying is not accurate. You can't have 40 Republicans
voting for a bill that is going to have undocumented illegal immigrants become
a police officer. That is not gonna happen.” She also rightly pointed out that
the asylum-seeking migrants pouring into Illinois won’t qualify, either,
because they’re not allowed to work.
McCombie blamed Democrats for creating an environment
that is forcing people out of policing as a career. This bill, she said, could
help alleviate that problem. And she stressed that only people who could be
approved by the federal government to possess and carry a firearm would
qualify.
“It is a conditional step to support law enforcement,”
McCombie said. “It is not, it is not a license to give illegal immigrants,
undocumented folks who are coming across our borders illegally, the ability to
become law enforcement. Hard stop.”
