NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. —The Kansas House passed a bill Wednesday that changes a few important policy points when it comes to how cities can choose whether or not to enforce federal immigration law and the usage of local identification cards. The bill was originally introduced at the request of Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
"The bill does two things," Schmidt said. "It says that local governments, governing bodies, the political branches of local government may not adopt ordinances that instruct their local police department to not cooperate or communicate with federal authorities, especially on immigration matters. The discretion would still lie, but it would lie with the law enforcement officials, it wouldn't lie with the local politicians. Number two, it says that if a local government, city or county, issues their own government identification card, they can do that and they can use them locally for whatever they want, but those cards may not be used to satisfy the requirements of any state law for identification."
This law was proposed after the Kansas City Kansas and Wyandotte County Unified Government decided to enact local ID policy.
"They made the deliberate decision they are going to issue Kansas City, Kansas ID cards to illegal aliens, to people who are not lawfully in the country, undocumented people, whatever you want to call them," Schmidt said. "You want to make clear that if that card is taken outside of Kansas City and used somewhere else, that people don't look at that and are misled that it's a proof of lawful presence."
The Kansas House passed the bill 84 to 38. The bill now goes to the Kansas Senate.