When we think of clashes between state and federal power, we tend to think of dramatic confrontations from our Advanced Placement US History textbooks—like President Dwight Eisenhower sending federal troops to Little Rock in 1957 to enforce school desegregation. But modern conflicts between states and Washington, D.C. tend to be less grandiose: In Rhode Island, the latest fight may come down to just one day. As US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) expands its reach and federal officials push the limits of aggressive immigration enforcement, Rhode Island lawmakers are once again considering the Act Relating to Criminal Offenses, also known as H7198, a bill that would reduce the maximum prison sentence for a misdemeanor from 365 days to 364.
Although seemingly minor, this change would help protect vulnerable visa holders from detention or deportation. The current one-year maximum sentence allows a federal immigration enforcement mechanism to be triggered, under which minor convictions punishable by a year or more in prison can serve as grounds for detention or deportation under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Immigrants lack the protection that citizenship offers and thus have the most to gain from this bill.
Because the change is so precise, even moderate legislatures lacking the political will to pass statewide sanctuary legislation are willing to make it. Rhode Island’s 364-day bill—and others like it—suggests that the most meaningful resistance to federal immigration enforcement will not come from the country’s progressive strongholds, but from more moderate statehouses willing to legislate one day at a time.
Take, for example, the story of Eva Mendes, a 48-year-old green card holder from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, who was detained in immigration custody for three months upon reentering the country this year due to a minor shoplifting charge nearly 15 years earlier. Eva pled guilty to this charge in 2009 and had already paid the subsequent fine—but that did not matter. The maximum sentence she could have been given was one year, which was grounds enough for her detention in 2025. One day—the difference between 364 and 365—was enough to separate Eva from her family.
Rhode Island is far from the first state to make this change. Seven states have already capped certain misdemeanor sentences at 364 days. Progressive states such as New York, California, and Oregon adopted this measure to protect their immigrant communities from disproportionate punishments years before President Donald Trump’s second term. The public response to ICE’s actions, however, has pushed even moderate state legislatures leftward on the issue of immigration reform.
Rhode Island does have a Democratic supermajority in the House and Senate, but the label of ‘Democrat’ means less than one may think. The legislature’s “big-tent” coalition is full of moderates who would run as Republicans in other states, routinely stalling more progressive legislation. Therefore, Rhode Island’s decision to advance the 364-day bill in this legislative session carries even more weight. It signals that even moderate legislators are now willing to stand up to the administration on its treatment of immigrants and that criminal code reform has become a politically tenable axis of resistance outside the country’s most progressive legislatures.
Virginia, one of 23 states in which neither party has a veto-proof supermajority in the legislature, has also proposed a bill reducing the maximum prison sentence for a misdemeanor to 364 days. If Rhode Island’s big tent makes the 364-day bill notable, Virginia’s divided and polarized legislature makes it remarkable. Both Rhode Island’s and Virginia’s bills may fail; what is significant, however, is that Democratic legislators in Virginia and Rhode Island understand that the political moment requires meticulous state-level resistance. When federal enforcement fails to make a distinction between violent criminals and green card holders with decade-old shoplifting charges, states have a moral obligation to protect their immigrant communities. Criminal code reform, precisely because it is so granular, allows them to do so without the political costs of broader sanctuary legislation.
By design, America’s federal system grants states broad authority over how they govern. It is therefore no surprise that progressive state legislatures have reformed their criminal codes to protect immigrants—and no surprise that conservative states have done the opposite. What is surprising is when a state like Rhode Island follows suit. The Ocean State is not California, New York, or Oregon. Its legislature is less ideologically cohesive, less uniformly progressive, and more politically eclectic. Rhode Island’s 364-day bill is a sign that resistance to federal immigration enforcement is spreading beyond the country’s most progressive legislatures. The clash between state and federal power may not materialise only in dramatic confrontations—in Rhode Island, it may come down to a single, consequential day.