Press Releases

Today Representative Rosendale introduced the Criminalize Fleeing from Immigration Enforcement Act.

With the Biden Border Crisis, the Southern Border is seeing increased instances of individuals fleeing Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement officers – including in deadly high-speed chases. 

In February, Montanans saw how Border Patrol had to release an individual because they could not prove that he was not an American citizen, a key component to charge an individual with improper entry. Even though this individual was in a car which led law enforcement on a more than 50 mile high-speed chase, this dangerous individual was allowed to be freed from holding because Border Patrol could not charge him with a federal crime.

This bill would close loopholes that allowed this to occur, making it a federal crime to flee from law enforcement pursing individuals for serious immigration crimes including improper entry, illegal reentry, smuggling an alien, transporting an alien, bringing an alien to the United States, and aiding or assisting certain aliens to enter the country who are inadmissible for certain criminal, subversive, or terrorist activity.

Those who flee while being pursued by federal, state, or local law enforcement for these offenses would be subject to up to 5 years in prison, or up to 8 years if they flee at a high speed.

“I was very troubled to learn that for the most part, aliens can flee law enforcement officers, like Border Patrol, from enforcing our nation’s immigration laws with impunity. This commonsense legislation would fix that,” said Rep. Rosendale. “This bill would prevent what happened in Whitefish from ever happening in our communities again, and will help decrease the amount of deadly high-speed chases with immigration law enforcement officers.”