Tiffany Rumbalski, center, of Hilliard, chants along with other demonstrators during an Indivisible Ohio protest against President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration to build a wall along the United States southern border last year outside U.S. Sen. Rob Portman's office in Columbus. [Joshua A. Bickel/Dispatch] ▲

Work with federal immigration enforcement officials or lose state funding, a pair of Republican House members say to local government officials.

Two Ohio Republicans want to follow in President Donald Trump's footsteps and try to withhold funding from local governments and law enforcement agencies that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.

"Put very simply, this bill will put in place measures to curtail illegal immigration in our state," Rep. Niraj Antani, R-Miamisburg, said during a committee meeting Thursday.

The bill, which Antani co-sponsored with Rep. Candice Keller, R-Middletown, is called Ohio's Anti-Sanctuary Cities Act. It would require cities, counties, sheriffs and police departments to follow certain rules regarding people who are in the United States illegally, or else they risk losing their homeland security funding and any Local Government Fund distributions from the state.

For example, local governments that give out public benefits would have to use a federal program called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements to verify everyone's eligibility. Law enforcement agencies would have to honor federal retainer requests.

And no local government could pass "an ordinance, policy, directive, rule or resolution" that limits its cooperation with federal authorities.

That's not so different from what Trump's Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, attempted to do in July 2017. It tried to make law enforcement grants contingent on local officials giving federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers access to any detention facility they operate, and on providing ICE 48 hours notice before releasing an inmate on its list.

Federal and state judges ruled those requirements unconstitutional.

The nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission, which provides analysis of every bill, raised similar concerns about House Bill 169.

"Because federal law allows a municipality to decline to participate in voluntary federal immigration enforcement programs, such as ICE detainer requests, and some municipalities do so decline, a court might find that the bill violates an Ohio municipality's home-rule power to make that decision," the Legislative Service Commission report said.

Cincinnati labeled itself a sanctuary city in 2017, but other Ohio cities, such as Columbus, took a more measured approach by essentially saying that immigration enforcement is not their responsibility.

Mayor Andrew J. Ginther signed an executive order in 2017 prohibiting the use of city resources for the "sole purpose of detecting or apprehending persons based on suspected immigration status, unless in response to a court order." It also said that Columbus wouldn't deny access to services based on immigration status.

"These policies are tying the hands of local law enforcement behind their backs. In these sanctuary-city areas, there have been sheriffs who have backed off holding criminal aliens for fear of lawsuits," Keller said.

"Law enforcement should never fear to do the job they were hired for — enforcing the law."

astaver@dispatch.com

@annastaver