Missouri state Senator-elect David Gregory has a novel idea for reducing illegal immigration: He wants to pay citizens to turn in migrants suspected of coming to America illegally.

The bill, one of seven introduced so far in the state’s legislature that focuses on immigration, is the most hardline of all the proposals. The state is home to less than one percent of all immigrants in the nation — just over 250,000 from all countries outside the United States. A full 84% of those immigrants speak English “well or very well,” according to the American Immigration Council.

In fact, half had already been naturalized as of this writing, with another roughly 40,000 eligible for naturalization.

Despite Missouri being basically the poster state for low, legal immigrant population, the scare tactics of the Republicans seem to have worked. All the bills currently in the legislature are sponsored by Republican legislators.

Gregory’s bill would “create an online portal for people to make reports to the State Highway Patrol and be eligible for the payout” of $1,000 each. That sets the scene for chaos: How will people know? What will be the recourse for people that citizens decide “look illegal” if they are falsely accused?

St. Louis immigration lawyer Javad Casali explains:

I don’t know how you do something like this without just stopping every brown person and demanding to see their papers. You’re gonna have some Puerto Rican walking down the street, gets tackled, and people are gonna be like, ‘We caught one!’ And they don’t know that Puerto Ricans are Americans.

In addition to the online portal for reporting, Senate Bill 72 creates the “Missouri Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program,” which would make anyone licensed as a bail bond agent eligible to be a literal bounty hunter for finding and detaining suspected illegal immigrants.

How do you become a bail bond agent in Missouri? Have at least a GED, take 24 hours of training, get your prints taken, and take a test as you apply for the license.

Hopefully those training programs include statistics for people to look at as far as what percent of the population are actually immigrants. I haven’t even told you what percent are from Mexico, the only country that people worried about illegal immigration seem to care about.

Of those quarter million immigrants, just 15% are Mexican. And again, many of those are already naturalized or eligible to be. This is going to be a LOT of harassment. And every single bounty paid will be paid for by Missouri taxpayers. All money will come from the General Fund.

Thankfully, many immigrants are likelier to know their rights than those that may come after them with the promise of a big payday: Less than 30% of US-born Missouri residents have a college degree, while 44% of all immigrants have one. That kind of tracks in a state where a bill like this might be proposed so unnecessarily.

Here’s the News Nation report on the Missouri bill:

A Missouri lawmaker is proposing a bounty program that would pay out citizens for reporting illegal immigrants to assist in President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans. More: https://t.co/KkHR5ycBbU pic.twitter.com/6GKpU7zaaA

— NewsNation (@NewsNation) December 5, 2024

There has been a lot of debate lately about what role states play in immigration enforcement, an oversight role usually filled by the federal government. President Biden is currently challenging a Texas proposal, SB4, that would, according to Reuters, “make it a state crime to illegally enter or re-enter Texas from a foreign country and would empower state judges to order that violators leave the United States, with prison sentences up to 20 years for those who refuse to comply.”

A judge has already blocked the bill, but Texas appealed and asked the courts to allow the law to go into effect pending the outcome of the appeal. That request was denied, and the case remains in appeals. At issue, of course, is whether states have the right to create laws that clash with existing federal statutes.

The denial of the Texas bill was based on a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that struck down provisions of a similar Arizona law on the grounds that “states cannot make laws that interfere with the federal government’s ability to enforce complex U.S. immigration laws.”

The Biden administration’s argument was much the same, saying that SB4 “interferes with the federal government’s powers under the U.S. Constitution to enforce U.S. immigration laws and the ability of migrants to apply for asylum and other humanitarian aid.”

It’s that last part at issue for Republicans in Arizona, Texas, and now Missouri — the GOP in these states wants to bypass any opportunity migrants might have to access a legal path to naturalization or even asylum, even if they enter at a legal port of entry, and make it a state crime that would prevent the individual convicted of it from ever entering that state again.

Trump has promised mass deportations on “day one” of his presidency. We’ll see how that pans out.