Although Missouri is over a thousand miles from the nation’s southern border, some state lawmakers have introduced legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
So far, eight bills in the Missouri House and seven pieces of legislation in the Missouri Senate address illegal immigration in some respect, although with the filibusters and conflict in the Senate, none of the bills has even been heard by a committee yet.
That is not the case in the Missouri House, where five bills have already completed their public hearings. This week, three bills were heard that seek to criminalize trespassing in the state by an illegal alien and threaten a felony offense for committing a simple traffic infraction.
Immigration is a central issue going into the 2024 elections, both nationally and in the state. On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for alleged failure to defend the border against waves of undocumented immigrants. This was the second attempt to do so, as the first effort to impeach Mayorkas was unsuccessful.