City Council passes bill prohibiting taxpayer funding for services to undocumented immigrants
The bill, which passed 11 to 7, would require Mayor Donna Deegan's office to provide a report to the City Council Finance Committee regarding all federal grants, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices, and the number of undocumented immigrants in public housing.
The vote was immediately met with a strong reaction from the crowd, with several yelling 'shame!'
Read the original, unamended ordinance below:
The bill was introduced by Councilman Rory Diamond (R-District 13), who also co-sponsored a recent controversial law increasing local immigration enforcement. 'Are we a nation of laws or are we a nation of anarchy? Are we Jacksonville or are we Los Angeles? Are we Florida or are we California?' said Diamond Tuesday night.
Multiple councilmembers expressed frustration about the bill's existence at the local level, insisting it should be addressed federally.
'We're dabbling places we do not belong,' said Councilman Rahman Johnson.
Diamond, however, argued it is a problem that must now be handled at the local level due to inadequate border handling by the Biden Administration.
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<
[DOWNLOAD: Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks]
Four amendments were made before the bill's passage, creating exceptions for certain services to undocumented immigrants. An amendment introduced by Councilmember Matt Carlucci passed, making an exception for services for victims of domestic violence. Exceptions were also added for victims of human trafficking, children's services, and services from UF Health.
Another amendment from Councilwoman Tyrona Clark-Murray made an exception for services to pregnant women.
'This is an attempt to make a horrible bill less horrible,' said Clark-Murray.
The meeting concluded immediately after the final vote around 9:40 P.M., nearly six hours after it began.
The bill now goes to Mayor Donna Deegan's desk, where she will have to decide whether or not to give it her signature.
The mayor's office released the following statement following the bill's passage:
'Mayor Deegan has concerns about the bill. She will be reviewing it and weighing all her options.'
[SIGN UP: Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
DC police to aid in federal immigration enforcement
Officers with the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) will now be able to assist federal agents with immigration enforcement in the District of Columbia, according to a memo issued days after President Trump authorized the deployment of the National Guard to help tackle crime in the nation's capital. MPD officers will be able to share information with immigration authorities about people at traffic stops and provide transportation for federal immigration agency employees and those they have detained. In the Thursday directive, signed by Police Chief Pamela A. Smith, MPD officers will not make any inquiry for the sole purpose of determining a person's immigration status and officers will not make inquiries into an individual's immigration status for the 'purpose of determining whether they have violated the civil immigration laws or for the purpose of enforcing civil immigration laws.' D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) has previously said that the District is not a 'sanctuary city.' The city has a policy that limits MPD cooperation with federal immigration agencies. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, said Wednesday that D.C. 'under federal control is not going to be a sanctuary city.' The memo comes three days after the president approved the deployment of the National Guard and other federal agents into the nation's capital to help curb crime, arguing the District is riddled with it. FBI Director Kash Patel said Thursday that 45 arrests were made overnight in the nation's capital. Trump's mobilization of the National Guard troops has been protested by some D.C. residents and sparked pushback from Democratic Party lawmakers. In the Thursday directive, Smith said MPD officers will not make arrests based solely on the warrants or detainers issued by federal immigration agencies 'as long as there is no additional criminal warrant or underlying offense for which the individual is subject to arrest.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Bondi signs order to end DC ‘sanctuary policies'
Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the rescission of a number of Washington, D.C., policing policies on immigration, declaring 'DC's sanctuary policies no longer apply.' In a series of late Thursday actions, Bondi targeted several long-standing policies as well as a Thursday directive that increased Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) cooperation with federal authorities on immigration matters but barred making inquiries or arrests based solely on someone's immigration status. Along with rescinding that policy, Bondi rescinded two other orders barring MPD officers from conducting immigration arrests for people that have no other criminal arrest warrant and to not inquire about someone's immigration status for the sole purpose of 'enforcing civil immigration laws.' Bondi also directed D.C. police to fully enforce a crowd control law that 'makes it unlawful to crowd or obstruct streets, public or private building entrances, passage through parks, and engage in or continue demonstrations where it is unlawful or after being told to cease engaging,' Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin wrote on social media. D.C. officials immediately cast doubt on whether Bondi had the authority to take such actions, which came along with naming Drug Enforcement Administration chief Terry Cole as Washington's 'emergency police commissioner.' It's not clear Bondi has the authority to do so, a move that launched a swift lawsuit from the D.C. attorney general's office and questions from D.C. leaders. In his letter to MPD Chief Pamela Smith, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb (D) argued the Home Rule Act — the law under which President Trump has temporarily assumed control of the District's police — did not allow for the federal government to directly alter the chain of command. 'It is my opinion that the Bondi Order is unlawful, and that you are not legally obligated to follow it,' he wrote. In sharing the letter on the social platform X, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said that while D.C. must provide its police for federal services, 'there is no statute that conveys the District's personnel authority to a federal official.' D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson (I) also argued Bondi had no ability to cast aside existing D.C. policies. 'Respectfully, the Attorney General does not have the authority to revoke laws,' she wrote on X. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Britain's shameful past holds a vital message about immigration culture today
'East of Aldgate one walks into a foreign town', foreigners 'swamping whole areas once populated by English people'. The 'substitution of a foreign for an English population' has created 'increasing bitterness of feeling'. No, not Robert Jenrick or Nigel Farage, but William Evans-Gordon, the Tory MP for Stepney, fulminating in 1903 against the arrival of Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in eastern Europe. 'Not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for the foreign invaders,' he told parliament. Evans-Gordon was a founder of the British Brothers' League (BBL), a powerful anti-immigration movement with the slogan 'England for the English', and the driving force behind the 1905 Aliens Act, designed to keep out Jewish refugees. Where previous arrivals had 'merged in the population', Evans-Gordon wrote in The Alien Immigrant, 'the Hebrew colony' formed a 'permanently distinct block – a race apart', refusing to 'assimilate' but coming 'like an army of locusts, eating up the English inhabitants or driving them out'. They brought with them 'colonies of foreign crime". In certain courts in London, 'English was hardly heard'. According to Evans-Gordon: 'The proportion of aliens who live by vice is inordinately high'. They indulged in 'depraved' sexual crimes, 'which, but for them, would hardly be known in this country'. Evans-Gordon's themes echo across the century. Arguments about populations being replaced, denunciations of asylum seekers as 'invaders', the insistence that migrants are unassimilable, accusations of mass criminality and depravity, are all wearily familiar. One can even hear in Evans-Gordon the contempt for what many now call the 'liberal elite'. The 'wholesale displacement of our people,' he wrote, 'is regarded with much philosophic calm by their fellow countrymen who live at a distance, whose homes have not been invaded, and who are not subjected to the daily terror of being turned into the streets.' That might have been Matthew Goodwin. It is not difficult to recognise today how this portrayal of unassimilable Jews draws on deep-rooted antisemitic tropes. It draws also upon ideas of cultural homogeneity and difference still in play today. Across the century, critics have always portrayed immigrants as destructive of local culture. Cultures, though, are not sealed containers containing a fixed essence that migrants pollute. They are porous vessels, internally conflicted, and changing over time. Nor are individuals fixed by their cultural inheritance, but can also develop and change. The Taliban has imposed upon Afghanistan deeply reactionary norms, including about the treatment of women, that draw upon one strand of Afghan culture, but which is contested by those for whom Afghan culture means something very different. Half a century ago, Afghanistan was far more liberal than it is today. It is why so many resisted the Taliban and why so many now seek to flee. British culture was far more conservative half a century ago than it is today. The social views of conservative Muslims would have, ironically, been closer to that of the British mainstream in the 1970s. Even commentators who now rail against liberalism have absorbed the liberal transformation of the past few decades and, indeed, deploy it as a weapon against migrants from conservative cultures. Cultures are not sealed containers. They are porous vessels, internally conflicted and changing over time For many critics, African and Asian migrants, and Muslims in particular, cannot be accommodated within the 'Judeo-Christian' tradition that defines the west. Yet, as Evans-Gordon's screed reveals, barely a century ago Jewish beliefs and practices were seen as being as incompatible with British values as many now deem Muslims to be. The idea of the 'Judeo-Christian' tradition is of recent vintage. It became deployed in the 1930s, particularly in America, by those attempting to build public support for the struggle against Nazism, suggesting as it did a common civilisation between Christians and Jews. From the 1950s it was repurposed as a weapon in the cold war, President Eisenhower describing 'Judeo-Christian civilisation' as the 'fundamental concept' separating America from the atheist Soviet Union. In the 21st century, especially after 9/11, the use of the concept changed again, becoming primarily a means of depicting Islam as standing outside the western tradition and, more recently, of gaining support for Israel in its war in Gaza. Jewish thought has unquestionably played an important role in the shaping of what we now call the western tradition. That was denied for much of the past 2,000 years. When finally acknowledged, it was in a distorted form, to buttress particular political projects. And both the denial and the acknowledgement became means of defining certain immigrants, previously Jews, now Muslims, as not belonging. Like many contemporary critics, Evans-Gordon elided his deprecation of immigrant culture with claims that they deprived British workers of basic material needs, from housing to jobs. Again, from today's vantage point, we can recognise the falsity of such arguments. The material deprivation Evans-Gordon described was real, but its root cause lay not with Jewish refugees but with exploitative bosses, unscrupulous landlords and indifferent politicians. What transformed working-class lives in the early 20th century was not restrictions on Jewish immigration but the growth of trade unions, an upsurge of collective action and the development of political parties and movements that challenged inequalities. Jewish workers, particularly in east London, were at the heart of these organisations and movements, helping forge solidarity across sectarian divides and in so doing renewing working-class culture. Today, as a new generation of Evans-Gordons try to colonise our attention, that is the most important message to echo across the century. Photograph by Jewish Chronicle/Heritage Images/Getty
