Georgia House voted 97-74 last Thursday in favor of HB 1105, sponsored by state Rep. Jesse Petrea, R-Savannah.
The bill was presented after police charged a Venezuelan man with beating a nursing student to death in the campus of the University of Georgia. José Ibarra, 26, is a Venezuelan citizen who, according to immigration authorities, crossed irregularly into the United States in 2022. Democrats warned that the bill would lead to prolonged detentions, separate parents born in other countries from their American-born children.