Alabama candidate Caroleene Dobson says she wants feds to alert local officials when migrants are coming

Caroleene Dobson, the Republican nominee in Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, said she would push for legislation requiring the federal government to give state and local officials specific, detailed information when migrants are placed in their communities.

Dobson said that would include the number of migrants, country of origin, sponsors, any known criminal records, estimated length of stay, and projected unreimbursed costs to state and local taxpayers.

“Our government is supposed to be open and transparent and make taxpayers feel safe and secure, but the current federal program of forcing migrants into local communities has been closed and opaque and makes taxpayers feel unsafe and less secure,” Dobson said in a press release.

Dobson said her proposal was prompted by the Biden administration’s program that allows people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela legal status to live and work in the United States for two years if they have an approved sponsor and if they pass what the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says is a rigorous vetting process.

Dobson faces Democratic nominee Shomari Figures in the 2nd District, which was redrawn by a federal court last year to favor Democratic candidates, setting up a potential flip of a GOP-held seat.

Dobson’s proposal taps into what has been an issue in the presidential election. Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have amplified concerns about problems caused by immigrants in other states, repeating false stories about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.

The alarm over Haitian immigration has spread to several cities in Alabama, where residents have come to public meetings to question local officials about stories shared on social media and elsewhere.

In Dobson’s press release this morning announcing her proposal, she said illegal immigrants are “flooding our public school classrooms, emergency rooms, and other public facilities.”

But reports from the Alabama cities where residents have raised those concerns have indicated the stories are exaggerated or false.

That includes in Sylacauga, where public officials said large numbers of Haitians are not showing up in their police reports, or affecting enrollment in huge numbers.

In Fairhope, city officials repeatedly told dozens of people who showed up to the council meeting on Monday that social media misinformation fueled a week-long panic over an unproven account that thousands of immigrants were arriving to Baldwin County.

Alabama lawmakers answer questions on Haitian immigration: ‘We’re talking about human beings’

Dobson said her proposal was prompted by the Biden administration’s Cuba-Haiti-Nicaragua-Venezuela Parole Program, commonly known as CHNV. It was created initially for Venezuelan migrants and expanded to include the other three countries last year, CBS reported.

About 530,000 migrants have entered the United States through the program, which Dobson said was not authorized by Congress. The Biden administration said the program was a way to create legal pathways for migrants from the four countries and reduce illegal border crossings. But Republicans have criticized CHNV as circumvention of immigration laws, the Associated Press reported.