Drummond co-leads 25-state coalition urging Supreme Court to take up Iowa immigration enforcement case
OKLAHOMA CITY (Aug. 12, 2026) – Attorney General Gentner Drummond is co-leading a coalition in supporting Iowa’s law criminalizing illegal entry into the state. Drummond and 24 attorneys general filed an amicus brief today in Bird v. Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case challenging a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
The brief supports Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird's petition asking the Supreme Court to review the Eighth Circuit's decision, which found Iowa's law unconstitutional and blocked the state from enforcing it. Iowa’s law mirrors federal law criminalizing illegal entry. A separate Eighth Circuit panel recently upheld a similar state law, creating a split within the circuit that the brief asks the Supreme Court to resolve.
Oklahoma has a direct stake in the outcome: a federal district court has enjoined Oklahoma’s own immigration enforcement law, and that case is now on appeal before the Tenth Circuit.
“States have always had the authority to protect their own citizens, and that includes the power to prosecute someone for breaking into our state illegally, just as we would for any other crime,” said Drummond. “The Eighth Circuit's ruling doesn't just tie Iowa's hands. It opens the door for federal courts to strike down any state law that so much as resembles federal law. Oklahoma has a stake in getting this right, and I'm proud to lead this coalition in asking the Supreme Court to step in.”
The coalition argues the Eighth Circuit ruled incorrectly in three ways: it let a lawsuit proceed even though the plaintiffs never showed they actually faced prosecution; it struck down Iowa's entire law without identifying a single unconstitutional application of it; and it treated any overlap between state and federal immigration law as grounds to strike a law down, an approach the states warn could put felon-in-possession laws, controlled-substance prosecutions and identity-theft statutes at risk too. Dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, Eighth Circuit Judge David Stras wrote that the case “is about as important as it gets.”
The brief, led by Drummond and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, was joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
