Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., is bringing a four-part legislative package to the Senate floor that would strip federal funding from sanctuary cities, make illegal entry a felony, shield federal agents from interference, and revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that support criminal violence. The bill is called the Protect America Act, and it reads like a direct answer to every confrontation, every obstruction, and every local government that has spent the last several years telling ICE agents they're not welcome.
The timing is not accidental. Anti-ICE protests continue to flare across the country, most notably in Minneapolis, where clashes between agitators and federal agents resulted in the fatal shootings of two people — Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good. Cities that declared themselves sanctuaries promised safety. What they delivered was chaos.
Schmitt isn't mincing words about what's driving the legislation: "This environment demands action. The Protect America Act is a comprehensive, four-part legislative response designed to address the root causes of disorder, restore lawful enforcement authority, protect federal officers from coordinated interference and violence, and prevent the abuse of nonprofit status to shield or support criminal activity."
According to Fox News, the Protect America Act covers an enormous amount of ground, but it's organized around four clear pillars. The first — and arguably the most consequential — targets sanctuary cities directly. Under the bill, federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions would be conditioned on cooperation with ICE and federal law enforcement. Cities that refuse to comply wouldn't see reduced funding. They'd lose it entirely.
That's not a negotiating position. That's a consequence. The bill would also require jails and detention centers to coordinate with ICE, sharing the identity, immigration status, and release timing of detainees.
No more quiet releases designed to keep illegal immigrants out of federal hands. And if a jurisdiction knowingly releases a removable alien who then commits a serious crime, the legislation opens the door to civil liability lawsuits. Victims and their families would have legal recourse against the cities that enabled the harm. Beyond sanctuary policy, the package aims at the legal framework around illegal entry itself:
That last provision will generate outrage in university towns from coast to coast. Good. The student visa system has been exploited for years, and linking compliance to visa issuance gives the federal government a lever that local politicians can't simply ignore.
The second major thrust of the Protect America Act focuses on the men and women actually enforcing immigration law — the federal agents who've become targets in cities where local leadership has all but invited confrontation.
The bill would make assaulting a federal agent a federal criminal offense. It would impose penalties of up to five years in prison for obstructing federal agents' duties. And it would close loopholes that currently allow protesters to use whistles or other devices to interfere with officers' communications in the field — a tactic that has become disturbingly common at protest sites.
At the same time, Schmitt's legislation includes explicit First Amendment protections, stating that the act does not prohibit expressive content or lawful expressive conduct. You can protest. You can chant. You can hold a sign. What you cannot do is physically obstruct an agent, assault an officer, or jam their communications while they're trying to do their job. That distinction should not be controversial. The fact that it needs to be codified tells you everything about where we are.
The fourth pillar targets nonprofits and NGOs that have operated in a gray zone for far too long. Under the Protect America Act, any nonprofit that promotes, incites, or provides material support for criminal violence would lose its tax-exempt status. This provision matters because the nonprofit ecosystem around immigration has ballooned into an industry — one that enjoys taxpayer subsidies through the tax code while, in some cases, actively working against the enforcement of federal law.
Revoking tax-exempt status doesn't criminalize advocacy. It simply says the American taxpayer won't subsidize organizations that cross the line into supporting violence. The distinction between advocacy and material support for criminal activity is one that the legal system already recognizes. Schmitt's bill applies it consistently.
While Schmitt prepares to introduce the Protect America Act, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and congressional Democrats have offered their own competing set of demands. Their list includes requiring ICE agents to obtain judicial warrants before operations, de-masking federal agents, and requiring full identification when agents are in the field.
These conditions are being presented as the price of Democratic support for the now-sidelined Homeland Security funding bill. Read that list again carefully. In the wake of federal agents being confronted, attacked, and — in Minneapolis — caught in clashes that left two people dead, the Democratic response is to make enforcement harder and agents more identifiable to hostile crowds. They want the names and faces of federal officers available to the same protesters who've been surrounding them in the streets.
Schmitt drew the connection plainly: "My view is we're not doing any of this stuff until, unless, we end sanctuary city status, because that's what's causing all of this, is the lack of cooperation. It's the confrontations that are being created, and why you don't see this in blue or red jurisdictions that aren't sanctuary status. So this solution is very obvious. I think there's a political grandstanding on their part."
He's right about the pattern. The jurisdictions experiencing the most volatile confrontations are the same ones that adopted sanctuary policies. The jurisdictions that cooperate with federal law enforcement — regardless of whether they're red or blue — aren't seeing the same chaos. Sanctuary status doesn't protect communities. It creates the conditions for disorder, then blames the federal government for showing up.
Here is how the feedback loop works. A city declares sanctuary status. Local law enforcement is prohibited or discouraged from cooperating with ICE. Federal agents must then operate independently, often creating higher-profile operations that result in public confrontations. Those confrontations produce media coverage. That coverage fuels protests. The protests escalate. And when things go wrong — as they did in Minneapolis — the same politicians who created the conditions of non-cooperation point to the fallout as evidence that federal enforcement is the problem.
It is a machine that manufactures its own justification. Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good are dead. That fact deserves more than a political talking point from either side. But the honest question — the one sanctuary city advocates refuse to engage — is whether those deaths would have occurred in a jurisdiction where local and federal law enforcement worked in coordination rather than at cross-purposes. The answer is uncomfortable for anyone who has spent years championing non-cooperation as a moral stance.
The Protect America Act faces the reality of the Senate, where legislative packages of this ambition require either bipartisan support or procedural maneuvering to advance. Democrats have already signaled that their priority is to constrain enforcement, not enable it. The sidelining of the Homeland Security funding bill is evidence enough of that.
But the political terrain has shifted. The public has watched months of escalating confrontations. They've seen the footage from Minneapolis. They've watched local officials obstruct federal operations and then express shock at the consequences.
Every viral clip of a crowd surrounding federal agents, every story of an illegal immigrant released by a sanctuary jurisdiction who then commits a violent crime, moves the needle toward the kind of legislation Schmitt is proposing. The Protect America Act forces a clean vote on a straightforward proposition: federal law should be enforced, federal agents should be protected, and cities that refuse to cooperate shouldn't be rewarded with federal dollars. Any senator who votes against that will have to explain the alternative they're defending.
Two people are dead in Minneapolis. Federal agents face hostile crowds in American cities. Nonprofits operate with tax-exempt status while facilitating obstruction. And sanctuary jurisdictions continue to treat federal immigration law as optional — then demand federal funding as mandatory. Schmitt's bill doesn't ask those cities to agree with federal policy. It asks them to follow the law or pay for the privilege of defying it. That shouldn't require legislation. But here we are.