By Reuters Fact Check | Reuters | AUG. 4, 2023 | Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast
Illinois House Bill 3751 only allows non-citizens who are eligible to work in the U.S. and are authorized to possess firearms under federal law to become police officers. Contrary to confusion on social media, the bill does not extend this right to all non-citizens or those who are not legally allowed to work in the country.
The text in one Facebook post (here) reads: “Illinois Governor signs bill allowing illegals to become police officers. This state continues to reward bad behavior. How is any law enforcement agency going to complete a thorough background check on someone here illegally? They CAN’T!”
“Illinois Governor signs bill allowing illegal aliens to become police officers and arrest US citizens,” reads another post (here).
Olivia Kuncio, a representative for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, said in an email to Reuters that the claim being shared is “not true at all.”
In a press conference on July 31, 2023 (here), Pritzker said, around the 44:28-minute timestamp, that undocumented immigrants are not allowed to become police officers in Illinois and that the bill extends this opportunity to legal permanent residents and DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipients. At the 45:10 mark, he says, “there are people out there that think that we’re just allowing anybody to become a police officer. That’s just not accurate.”
DACA refers to a policy that protects those who came to the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to request work authorization, as explained in a report by Reuters (here). (www.uscis.gov/DACA).
Background checks are carried out on those requesting DACA status, as detailed (here).
The bill (here), signed by Pritzker on July 28, 2023, will allow a person who is “legally authorized under federal law to work in the United States and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm, or who is an individual against whom immigration action has been deferred by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process and is authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, or purchase or otherwise possess a firearm” to become police officers.
“DACA has a more stringent standard than basically any other immigration-related benefit or similar thing,” said Lauren Aronson, clinical professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, in an email to Reuters. “DACA recipients have already submitted to background checks in order to get their DACA and they have to be found to have no significant misdemeanor (or worse) offense on their record.”
It remains unclear how the bill would apply to DACA recipients because while they are legally authorized to work, they are not currently eligible to obtain firearms under federal law (bit.ly/3OlVNF8), (see Q6) (here).
When asked about this, Kuncio said, “the bill does not allow or deny DACA recipients the ability to carry firearms,” and that “DACA recipients would need to be authorized under federal law to obtain, carry, purchase, or possess a firearm.”
Aronson acknowledged that DACA recipients can’t access firearms at the moment, so the bill’s passage means Illinois DACA recipients would be able to move forward as recruits if there is a federal shift in the law in the future.
Reuters fact-checked a claim regarding a similar bill in California in January 2023 (here).
VERDICT
Misleading. Illinois House Bill 3751 allows non-citizens who are eligible to work in the U.S. under federal law to become police officers.
