Texas House set to vote on bail restrictions for people illegally in the country accused of violent crimes
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Senate Joint Resolution 1 — a proposed constitutional amendment to prevent bail for those not lawfully in the country accused of certain crimes — faces a crucial vote in the House on Wednesday, hours before a midnight deadline.
Known as 'Jocelyn's Law', after 12-year-old Houston girl Jocelyn Nungaray was allegedly killed by a pair of men illegally in the country last year, SJR 1 is a priority of Gov. Greg Abbott.
'Illegal immigrants who are arrested should be considered a flight risk, denied bail and turned over to [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)],' Abbott said during his state of the state address in early February.
While the Texas legislature has passed tangential laws designed to uphold Abbott's vision — such as Senate Bill 8 which requires local law enforcement agencies to partner with ICE on their 287(g) detention program — SJR 1 kept getting stalled in the Texas House.
The proposed amendment took nearly three months to reach a House floor vote on May 19, passing to a third reading with an 88-50 vote. However, that's not enough for constitutional amendments which require a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of the legislature and a majority vote from the public.
After failing to get the required 100 votes, SJR 1 was postponed. And postponed again. In total, it's been postponed seven times before Wednesday. It passed the Senate 28-2 all the way back on Feb. 19, but Senate Democrats had reservations about the bill.
The senators worried about how broad the language is concerning the definition of 'illegal alien.' As it is written, Jocelyn's Law defines an illegal alien as anyone who entered the United States without inspection, or anyone who entered the country as a nonimmigrant and failed to maintain that status before they are accused of a crime. A nonimmigrant can be any foreign person allowed to enter the country for a certain amount of time and for a certain purpose, such as a student visa.
The senators argue the language should be refined to 'ensure that those who may have initially entered the country without authorization but have since gone through the appropriate legal processes to gain lawful status are not impacted by this legislation.'
SJR 1 is modeled off of the United States Congress' Laken Riley Act. It requires judges to deny bail for those defined as 'illegal aliens' if they're accused of committing one of these crimes:
First-degree felony criminal solicitation
Murder
Capital murder
Aggravated kidnapping
Trafficking of persons
Continuous trafficking of persons
Indecency with a child
Sexual assualt
Aggravated sexual assault
Felony injury to a child
Aggravated robbery
First-degree felony burglary with intent to:
Continuous sexual abuse of a young child or disabled individual
Indecency with a child
Sexual assualt
Aggravated sexual assault
Prohibited sexual conduct
Aggravated promotion of prostitution
Compelling prostitution
Possession or promotion of child pornography
A felony where:
A deadly weapon was used or brandished
The accused was a party to the felony where a deadly weapon was used or brandished
A felony under the election code
An offense involving the manufacturing or delivery of a controlled substance with intent to delivery
An offense involving the manufacturing, delivery or possession of a controlled substance in a drug-free zone, if the accused had already been convicted of committing a similar crime
A judge or magistrate must deny bail if they determine there is probable cause the person engaged in the accused crime at a hearing.
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch is an immigration attorney and has been following SJR 1. She is concerned that local criminal courts will have to make decisions on someone's immigration status, a job she feels is better adjudicated in a federal court.
'Those are two independent systems and they should be independent because immigration is complicated and it's federal law,' Lincoln-Goldfinch said. 'I've represented people who've been accused of being terrorists just because they have tattoos. I've seen firsthand the way detention can be politicized. I, personally, do not trust the fact that that would not happen at the state level.'
The House and Senate must pass all bills on third reading by midnight on Wednesday. Any bills not passed are considered 'dead.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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