Committee reviews AB 217 to bar immigration enforcement from school grounds without a warrant

Assemblymember Cecilia Gonzales presented Assembly Bill 217 to the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying the bill would prohibit school districts and school personnel from allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal officials enforcing immigration laws to access school facilities or students’ education records without a signed lawful order or warrant.

Gonzales said the bill defines public school to include charter schools and university schools for the profoundly gifted, and that knowingly and willfully violating the provision would subject an employee to district disciplinary action and, for subsequent violations, a misdemeanor. She told the committee the bill’s intent is statewide consistency: Washoe and Clark counties have similar policies, but some rural districts do not.

Witnesses in support included civil-rights organizations, school-district and school-board representatives, labor unions and immigrant-rights groups. Kayla Maysay of the ACLU of Nevada said the bill restores protections that were removed when a Department of Homeland Security directive rescinded prior guidance that had limited enforcement at sensitive locations. Tom Clark of the Nevada Association of School Boards said the bill “puts into law what that should look like across the state,” and that he and the sponsor worked to craft an amendment under which a first violation would be a district discipline matter and a second, knowing violation could be a misdemeanor.

Supporters said the range of harms includes increased absenteeism, anxiety and trauma among students in mixed-status families. Testimony cited state and national data: presenters noted an attempt to reduce chronic absenteeism and quoted a dataset that more than 47,000 Nevada students missed more than 10 percent of the 2023–24 school year; others cited estimates of the share of parents who are immigrants in Nevada.

Opponents said the bill could put school employees in a conflict between state and federal obligations and risk criminal exposure under federal statutes if districts blocked lawful federal process. Representatives of the Nevada Republican Party and other opponents said the measure could improperly impede federal enforcement or create legal risks; committee counsel and the chair asked counsel to clarify federal-state interaction and received counsel’s reading that the bill, as written, would not change how federal law and state law interact and includes an explicit exception for compliance with a lawful warrant or court order.

Committee members debated whether the bill addresses an actual local problem: Senator Hansen and others said they were not aware of any ICE activity inside Nevada schools and urged caution about creating panic; other members and many witnesses said they have heard reports of families’ fear, that nationally there have been incidents and that rescission of federal guidance created a need for state protections.

Witnesses included school-district staff and representatives (Clark County School District and Nevada Association of School Boards), advocacy organizations (ACLU of Nevada, Make the Road Nevada, Nevada Immigrant Coalition), labor (SEIU), and the UNLV Immigration Clinic. The committee closed testimony on AB 217 without taking a vote and asked for follow-up information from school districts about existing policies in rural counties.

Ending: The hearing record shows wide public testimony for AB 217 and clarifying legal discussion about federal-state interaction; committee counsel said the bill would not change federal supremacy principles and contains an exception for lawful warrants, but committee members asked for additional district-level policy information before further action.