Senate advances anti-sanctuary city bills, but stops short on other House priorities

Yahoo

16-05-2025

Sen. Tara Reardon, a Concord Democrat, speaks during a Senate session, Thursday, May 15, 2025. (Photo by Ethan DeWitt/New Hampshire Bulletin)
The New Hampshire Senate advanced two anti-sanctuary city bills to Gov. Kelly Ayotte's desk Thursday, bringing key Republican efforts closer to completion.
But in other areas — including other immigration bills — the Republican-led Senate put the brakes on some conservative proposals advanced by the House.
The chamber killed a bill that would have required all training and testing materials to be produced in English. It held back a bill that would require applicants for driver's licenses who do not have U.S. citizenship to prove they were certified to drive in their home country.
And it blocked a number of House bills designed to increase verification measures to vote.
Here's a look at where Senate Republicans broke from their House counterparts this week — and where they found agreement.
The House and Senate are aligned on a pair of anti-sanctuary bills. On Thursday, the Senate passed House Bill 511, which would require all municipalities to comply with immigration detainers by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 'if safe to do so.'
The bill, known as an anti-sanctuary city bill, would also prohibit municipalities from adopting policies to ignore federal directives or not cooperate with federal authorities.
But it also includes a few exceptions. It does not require local law enforcement to pass along an undocumented person's information when they have been a 'necessary witness or victim' of a serious crime, which would include murder, rape, domestic violence, assault, kidnapping, blackmail, and other offenses.
And it prohibits local law enforcement from investigating the citizenship status of someone in their custody, unless they are investigating whether that person broke New Hampshire law.
Sen. Regina Birdsell said the bill is about forcing communities to follow federal law.
'When federal authorities present an immigration detainer, New Hampshire police departments should honor that and not help illegal immigrants evade the law,' she said. 'I never thought this would be controversial.'
But Sen. Tara Reardon, a Concord Democrat, countered that communities might not support ICE detainers and shouldn't be forced by the Legislature to comply with them.
'As a state, we should not be asked to take the responsibilities or bear the costs that … lead to such outcomes,' said Reardon. 'Communities like ours should not be put in the position of enabling mass deportations or detentions that go against our values and ignore our legal and social systems.'
HB 511 will go directly to the governor's desk in the coming weeks. Ayotte has supported it.
On Thursday, the Senate approved House changes to a second anti-sanctuary city bill, Senate Bill 62, which would block state or local governments from prohibiting law enforcement entities from entering into voluntary agreements with ICE. That bill will also head directly to Ayotte's desk.
Sen. Bill Gannon, a Sandown Republican, noted that he has been pushing for legislation to end sanctuary cities for years, and said with the passage of SB 62, 'we'll finally complete this journey.'
Yet in some areas of immigration policy, the Senate has pulled back from what the House had pushed for.
House Bill 452 created a number of new hurdles for undocumented people and those without U.S. citizenship to obtain driver's licenses.
The bill would stop the Division of Motor Vehicles from renewing a driver's license for anyone who is not a U.S. citizen and 'cannot prove that they are a lawful permanent resident of the United States.' Currently, there is no such prohibition.
State statute says the DMV 'may' require nonresidents who are living in the state on a temporary basis to provide a certification from the government of their country of origin that indicates they are licensed to drive. HB 452 would change 'may' to 'shall,' making it a requirement, and would allow the DMV to also accept proof of previous vehicle operation in the person's foreign country.
But without debate, the Senate re-referred the bill to the Transportation Committee, which means there will be no vote by the full Senate until early 2026.
The Senate also killed House Bill 461, which would require that all driver's license examinations and related materials be 'distributed in the English language only,' with an exception for American Sign Language.
But it passed House Bill 71, which would prohibit public schools from offering their facilities as emergency shelter or housing exclusively to undocumented people, even if ordered to do so by the federal government or the state. The bill would allow schools to be used as shelters in other emergencies for specified disasters — including fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, high water events, tidal waves, earthquakes, or snowstorms — as long as those emergencies do not exceed 72 hours.
The Senate has not given House Republicans everything they have asked with voting legislation, either.
The two chambers are aligned on one particular issue. In March, the Senate passed Senate Bill 213, requiring people seeking to obtain absentee ballots to produce documentary proof of U.S. citizenship through a birth certificate, passport, or other document. The bill would bring the absentee ballot process under the same requirements as the in-person voting requirements. Last year, then-Gov. Chris Sununu signed a law imposing a hard documentary proof of citizenship requirement for new voter registrations in the state. That bill — the furthest-reaching in the country — is currently facing two lawsuits in federal court.
The Senate's bill mirrors House Bill 217, which passed the House in March, indicating support in both chambers. On Thursday, the Senate killed that bill, arguing it was duplicative.
But the Senate rejected a different bill, House Bill 274. That bill would have required supervisors of the checklists to comb through their municipality's voter rolls once a year and purge any voter who has not voted within the previous five years. Currently, those reviews are done once every 10 years.
'The committee believes that requiring a yearly check, when there are already periodic checks in statute, would increase administrative costs and unduly overburden local election officials,' wrote Sen. James Gray in an explanation in the Senate calendar.
The Senate killed the bill unanimously.