Republican Brian Kemp outlined a plan to create a new database to track undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes and to speed deportations if he's elected governor.
The secretary of state unveiled his proposal for a "criminal alien database" on Tuesday, a day after his campaign made its TV debut with a pledge to combat illegal immigration.
He said the database would aggregate data from state, local and federal law enforcement agencies and track the number of convictions, arrests and deportations committed by people who aren’t in the country legally.
The information would be supplied to the Georgia Crime Information Center by local law enforcement officials, prosecutors and courts. It would be published on the GCIC website and be made available to authorities and some public officials.
Kemp would also require that law enforcement officials transport people in the country illegally to a federal facility for deportation. Current state law now authorizes local officials to do so, but does not mandate those transfers.
The database would help law enforcement officials recognize threats, detect trends and monitor gang activity, he said, to make “illegal immigrants think twice before entering the Peach State to harm and terrorize our citizens.”
Democrats swiftly rebuked Kemp’s proposal. DuBose Porter, the state party’s chair, said the idea “does nothing more than incite bigotry and fear” and invoked his office’s inadvertent release of confidential data to media outlets and political parties.
“Brian Kemp is nothing but incompetent when it comes maintaining databases as he is responsible for leaking every one of our social security numbers to both public and private organizations,” he said.
With a “putting Georgians first” platform that echoes Trump’s America First motto, Kemp aims to rev up conservative voters in rural Georgia and last week ended a 50-stop bus tour that crisscrossed the state.
The GOP field is still unsettled. A Mason-Dixon poll released last week shows Cagle with a sizable advantage and a muddled race for the second spot between Kemp, Tippins and Hill. State Sen. Michael Williams is also running on a pro-Trump platform.
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