U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) spoke exclusively with The Tennessee Star‘s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy on Wednesday, outlining new legislation aimed at expanding cooperation between state and local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities, while also criticizing Democrats over immigration enforcement and their continued refusal to fund the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
During the interview, Blackburn discussed her newly-introduced 287(g) Expansion Act, which she is sponsoring alongside South Carolina U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
The legislation seeks to incentivize jurisdictions to partner with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by offering increased federal grant funding.
“This is legislation that would strengthen our 287(g) agreements. Now we’ve got 36 states and in Tennessee we’ve got 49 counties that have agreements with ICE to work with them,” Blackburn explained on The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“The reason this is important is if you are going to share this information, you need your local, state, and federal agencies working together to make certain that immigration law is going to be enforced,” she added.
Blackburn emphasized that the bill would provide financial incentives for participation, noting, “It would allow these jurisdictions to get an extra 10 percent on their grants.”
She also explained that the program ensures local agencies are reimbursed for their efforts.
“The 287(g) program requires that the federal government reimburse local law enforcement for the expenditures, the money that they’ve spent in apprehending and detaining these individuals that are in the country illegally,” she said.
When asked whether sanctuary jurisdictions might be persuaded to participate, Blackburn was cautiously optimistic.
“We hope that this will help to incentivize so that we get more of them participating in the program. These blue states love to get federal dollars,” she said. “To incentivize this to say, ‘Hey, we would get a plus up on the funds that we are expending for simply doing what is required by the rule of law.’ This is one way to enhance these detentions and these deportations.”
Turning to congressional funding disputes, Blackburn sharply criticized Democrats over continued delays in funding DHS.
“Actually it is 74 days,” she said, referring to the length of time DHS funding has lapsed. “And this is the third time they’ve shut down DHS this year…Their goal is to abolish ICE and to defund the police. And when they couldn’t accomplish it legislatively, then they started working the angles and shutting down DHS.”
She continued, “You look at the war in Iran, you look at the amount of danger that is out here across the country, you look at the threats on the president, on members of Congress, on the cabinet, and still, the Democrats do not want to fund Homeland Security because their goal is to abolish ICE. It is to stop all immigration enforcement and it is to defund the police.”
Blackburn also pointed to internal Democratic Party dynamics as a barrier to bipartisan cooperation.
“You look at who is running the party right now. It’s the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren wing that is running the Democrat Party,” she said. “You’ve got Democrats who are not free thinkers, but they are beholden to that left wing and they are not breaking on this.”
She noted that Pennsylvania U.S. Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) has occasionally crossed party lines on law enforcement-related votes, adding, “John Fetterman is the only one who has voted with us on some of these pro-law enforcement, pro-military issues.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X.
