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Committee weighs adding federal immigration query to carry‑permit background checks; bill laid over
Summary
The House Public Safety Committee heard testimony on House File 284, a bill that would add an immigration/alien status query to Minnesota permit-to-carry background checks to conform to an ATF recommendation; the committee laid the bill over without taking final action.
The Minnesota House Public Safety Committee on Feb. 26 heard testimony on House File 284, which would add an immigration/alien-query check to the state permit-to-carry background process to align Minnesota law with guidance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The committee laid the bill over for further work and did not vote on it.
Proponents said the change is narrowly intended to close a gap in Minnesota’s background-check process. Sheriff Brian Welk, testifying for the Minnesota Sheriffs Association, said his office discovered an individual who met state criteria for a carry permit but later was found to have an active federal felony warrant tied to an ATF investigation. “I’m here today to testify in support of House File 284,” Welk said, and described the county’s discovery that the current myBCA portal does not verify immigration status.
The bill would add a query to the myBCA portal that, according to testimony, would contact a federal database and return an immediate verification — comparable to a driver’s license or NICS check — showing whether an applicant’s immigration status renders them ineligible under federal law. Welk said his office’s annual review process caught the case in year four of the permit and that, in his instance, the applicant had purchased multiple firearms that later became subject to an ATF investigation.
Members pressed witnesses on what happens to data submitted through the query. Representative Lehi Moller and others asked whether U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would retain or use information beyond returning a verification. Sheriff Welk and other testifiers said the portal query returns a status response from the federal database and that local agencies would not have an automatic notification function to ICE beyond the query itself. Multiple members requested follow-up information about how the federal system handles and retains queries and whether the query produces additional federal records.
Committee chairing members noted the ATF first flagged the state statute in 2019 and that the proposed change is intended to bring state statute into federal compliance. Committee leadership said staff and stakeholders will continue work on language and data‑handling concerns before the committee takes further action.
The committee laid House File 284 over for later consideration; no fiscal note had been received and no vote on the bill’s merits was taken at the hearing.
Ending: The bill remains under committee consideration; members asked staff to gather more detail from federal partners about query handling and data retention before returning the measure to the committee.
