Lawmakers in Arizona have moved forward with a Republican-backed bill that would make it a crime to warn someone that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “imminent or ongoing” in its threat to arrest or pick someone up.
Speech versus public safety
Misryoum newsroom reported that the new version of the proposal has been narrowed after Sen.
John Kavanagh acknowledged the earlier draft could have been read to cover exactly the kind of warnings Democrats described.
In particular, Kavanagh admitted he built the original legislation after Democratic state Sen.
Analise Ortiz posted the location of ICE agents in her Phoenix neighborhood.
The updated bill is now said to target a more specific scenario—notification that someone knows is being sought by law enforcement.
For Rep.
Nancy Gutierrez, the fight is about what the bill would actually capture.
“It targets speech,” she said.
“It criminalizes communications itself.” Her argument is that the legislation’s definition of an illegal warning could include everything from bells and whistles to electronic communications, gestures, written messages, and even “any other method of conveying information” that isn’t explicitly spelled out.
Gutierrez, a Tucson Democrat, didn’t talk in abstract legal terms.
She described how people in communities share alerts when they’re hearing about ICE nearby and say they’re trying to prevent what she called “random kidnapping” of citizens.
“So we let people know: This has been seen at this corner or at this grocery store, or people have been seen here, be careful if you are in that area,” she said.
In her view, the bill would criminalize those kinds of warnings.
The narrowing clause, and the worries it doesn’t erase
In his explanation, that means a person wouldn’t be arrested just for telling others that ICE officers are in the area. Instead, Kavanagh said the law would apply when someone knows another specific person is being sought and then warns that other person.
Gutierrez said she still isn’t convinced.
She raised scenarios where a neighbor’s immigration status may be in question—such as a person who applied for asylum—or families who learn that immigration officials are coming to a school.
She also argued that if she approached a neighbor and said, essentially, “ICE is coming,” the law could be applied anyway, even if she was only trying to keep someone safe.
Kavanagh responded that, under his framing, the warning would need to involve “a specific” person law enforcement is coming for—something he said people like Gutierrez’s imagined neighbor wouldn’t know in advance.
At one point, to make it concrete, Kavanagh offered an example involving a warrant and a quick warning.
If police got out of the car and said they were going to serve it on “Joe Blow,” and someone quickly walked to the back yard where they knew he was barbecuing and told him “ICE is here to get you,” then the warning, Kavanagh said, would be illegal.
He acknowledged his bill could have looked different if he were starting from scratch.
“Courts have ruled that it’s a First Amendment right to post on the internet ‘Police are on Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street,’” he said, adding that he also believes it’s protected speech to blow a whistle and say ICE is in the area.
That reasoning, he said, is what pushed him to recraft the legislation.
But House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos said the boundaries still aren’t clear enough.
He argued that SB 1635 uses terms like “interference” or “assisting” or “harbor” that he said are undefined, and that vague or overly broad drafting could allow enforcement that sweeps in people he believes are “going around and educating their community about their rights.” De Los Santos also suggested the bill could be unconstitutional because of what he described as poor drafting.
Kavanagh counters that the current version is designed to withstand a legal challenge, but he also built in a “severability” clause.
That clause says if a court finds any part of the act—or even how it’s applied to a particular person or circumstance—is legally invalid, it doesn’t automatically wipe out the entire statute.
And, honestly, that’s where the debate seems to keep circling back: not just what the bill says now, but what a court might decide it means when it’s tested—somewhere down the line.
In the hallway buzz outside the hearing room, someone laughed pretty loudly and then the sound cut off fast, like the moment ended.
A few steps later, staffers were still flipping through draft language, the air smelling faintly of coffee and paper—nothing dramatic, just the ordinary grind before legislators decide what’s too much and what’s just warning.