A proposed Mississippi bill will pay bounty hunters to target immigrants. In other words, House Bill 1484, proposed by District Attorney Matthew Barton and authored by State Representative Justin Kean, has proposed creating a “Mississippi illegal aliens certified bounty hunter program,” which would give certification to bail bond agents and surety recovery agents to find and detain anyone in the country illegally. As well as possibly creating a hotline where people could report and leave anonymous tips. Each certified hunter who successfully deports someone could receive a reward of $1,000 – this is in an effort to support the new president, Trump, and local lawmakers.
In an interview with LiveNOW from FOX News, Kean said the bill is “a neighborhood watch sort of gap for people for people that deal with criminals on a day-to-day basis.”
“I think the initial knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people is they see this, and it says, ‘Illegal Alien Bounty Hunter Program,’ and they just assume that people are going to run rampant and just start scooping up individuals and start hauling them off,” Kean said. “We want licensed, legal people. They go through a vetting process and then specifically target those that should not be here that are a detriment to our national safety, our neighborhoods and our schools and so forth.”
He went on to say that this is “an opportunity for Mississippi to kind of take that step to support (President Trump) and (for local lawmakers) to illustrate to the voters what we were trying to do, and we hear what you’re saying.”
Advocacy groups and immigration attorneys tell the Mississippi Free Press that this will likely not go through and that it is probably a publicity stunt to strike fear.
Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance (MIRA) Patricia Ice, an immigration attorney, calls these bills disappointing.
“If they all got arrested here in Mississippi and had to leave, I think the economy would suffer,” Ice said.
Independent legal experts question their motives for introducing this bill. Some observers even say that this is a legislative assault on undocumented immigrants. Migrants say this bill will probably run into many legal pitfalls, and the chances of it being approved are slim whether it is a publicity stunt; staying current and knowledgeable of what’s happening in our state is essential.
