When Alabama lawmakers passed a sweeping anti-immigration bill in 2011, backlash was swift. Immigrant advocates warned that Latinos were fleeing the state, fearing arrests for their status or for "harboring" undocumented people. And some business leaders condemned the law after police arrested German and Japanese car executives for not having their licenses on them, a practice intended to funnel undocumented people from police stops into deportation proceedings. Civil rights groups sued, and courts overturned much of the law as unconstitutional. Activists thought the effort was behind them. But this year, it’s come roaring back as states pass record amounts of new laws targeting immigrants in 2025. In May, Alabama established a new crime for transporting undocumented immigrants into the state.

Alabama is one of 37 states that have enacted a combined total of at least 104 immigration-related laws in 2025, according to an analysis of data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. The laws reflect a nationwide crackdown on immigration galvanized by the Trump administration, with dozens of statutes creating new restrictions and penalties around employment, voting, education, driver’s licenses, public benefits and other aspects of life for non-citizens.

Lawmakers are paying special attention to the role of state and local policing in immigration enforcement, passing at least 34 laws this year that encourage these agencies’ cooperation with federal authorities, criminalize aid to undocumented immigrants, create state immigration enforcement bureaus and more. As of July, the number of these new laws is more than double the tally of similar laws enacted in all of 2024.

In at least four states — Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Idaho — new strict anti-immigration laws are similar to ones in other states that courts have already struck down for encroaching on federal immigration enforcement, demonstrating the severity of the influx of new laws targeting immigrants in 2025. But Republican lawmakers and governors, vowing support for President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, advanced the bills anyway.

These laws come at a time when legal scholars say the U.S. Supreme Court could be more receptive to state anti-immigration statutes.

Read the full article about new laws targeting immigrants in 2025 by Jill Castellano and Shoshana Walter at The Marshall Project.