by Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector
May 13, 2025

Heath Allbright, a businessman and former Cullman County Board of Education member, won the Republican nomination Tuesday for the House District 11 special election.

Voters in Cullman and Blount counties chose Allbright, 39, over 60-year-old military veteran Don Fallin. As of 8:45 p.m. Tuesday, Allbright received 1,909 votes (54.3%), while Fallin got 1,609 votes (45.7%) in unofficial election results.

The vote was very close in Cullman County, Allbright got 50.4% with Falling getting 49.6%. Allbright sealed his victory by taking 71.1% of Blount County’s votes.

Allbright announced his victory via social media.

“I am deeply honored by the trust voters in District 11 have placed in me,” Allbright said in a press release. “I’m ready to fight for our families, schools, and businesses, ensuring our community thrives while preserving the values that make Blount and Cullman Counties home.”

A message seeking comment from Allbright was left Tuesday evening.

Allbright campaigned on conservative Christian values and supporting local education. He said in an interview on May 1 that he supports the CHOOSE and RAISE acts because they bring local control to parents. 

According to campaign finance records, Allbright raised $118,000 and spent $62,185. The Alabama House Majority Political Action Committee (PAC) donated $5,000 to Allbright’s campaign, as well as many other PACs.

A message seeking comment from Fallin was left Tuesday night.

Allbright will still face Democratic candidate Alex Braswell on Aug. 26. Braswell, a 30-year-old American Sign Language interpreter, said Tuesday night she looks forward to a clean, concise general election in August. 

“I wish Heath the best going forward,” she said. “I won’t say no to any debates until the election.”

The seat became open after former Rep. Randall Shedd, R-Fairview, resigned in February to take a job with Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger, R-Cullman. The district is solidly Republican. Shedd, who won the seat in a special election in 2013, never faced opposition in any subsequent general election.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The post Heath Allbright wins GOP nomination in HD 11 special election appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

The content presents a straightforward report on a Republican candidate’s primary victory and upcoming general election in a solidly Republican district. It highlights the candidate’s conservative Christian values and support for local education initiatives, which are typical of center-right political stances. The article remains largely neutral and factual, offering balanced information about both candidates without editorializing, but the focus on conservative themes and the prominence given to the GOP nominee’s platform indicate a center-right leaning overall.

by Tim Henderson, Alabama Reflector
May 13, 2025

This story originally appeared on Stateline.

Local sheriffs are on the front lines in deciding whether to participate in the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans. But states increasingly are making the choice for them.

More and more, sheriffs’ hands are tied no matter whether they do — or don’t — want to help with deportations, though they often get the blame when conservatives draw up lists of sanctuary cities.

“‘Naughty lists,’ as we call them, are not super helpful here,” said Patrick Royal, a spokesperson for the National Sheriffs’ Association. “We all know there are places like Colorado where you can’t [help with deportations], and places like North Carolina where you have to.”

Cooperation between sheriffs and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lies at the heart of the Trump administration’s immigration detention policy. The administration plans to punish noncooperative jurisdictions with funding cuts — though many legal experts agree that cooperation is voluntary unless state or local laws say otherwise.

Sheriffs, who typically run local jails, must decide what to do when faced with immigration detainers — requests from ICE to hold onto incarcerated people up to two extra days so ICE officers can show up and arrest them. ICE issues those detainers when the agency reviews fingerprints sent electronically for background checks as part of the jail booking process.

Otherwise, arrested suspects who post bond or are otherwise released by a judge might go free despite their immigration status, prompting ICE in some cases to pursue them in the community.

In North Carolina, Sheriff Garry McFadden ran on a platform of limiting cooperation with ICE when he was elected in Mecklenburg County, home to Charlotte, in 2018. But today, McFadden must comply with detainers because of a state law passed last year.

In a now-retracted Facebook post, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis in late April accused Mecklenburg and several other North Carolina counties of “shielding criminal illegal immigrants” as sanctuary jurisdictions. Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said in the post he was writing federal legislation to prosecute sanctuary jurisdictions.

“You can’t say we’re a sanctuary county and have state laws that say we have to work with ICE. You can’t have both,” McFadden said. He added that he’d like more choice about whether to comply with detainers. A federal funding cutoff would endanger important jail programs such as rape counseling, he said.

“Everybody’s focused on immigration like that’s the biggest fire, and nobody wants to address the other things. The losers will be the prisoners who need all these services we provide,” McFadden said.

Conservative sheriffs in Democratic-controlled states also can be frustrated by state policy on detainers. Sheriff Lew Evangelidis of Worcester County, Massachusetts, said he’s been criticized for releasing prisoners wanted by ICE but sometimes has no choice: A 2017 state Supreme Court ruling prohibits holding prisoners based on detainers.

“If they [ICE] want this person and consider them a threat to public safety, then I want that person out of my community. I want to keep my community safe,” said Evangelidis. He supported a Republican-sponsored effort in the state legislature to allow 12-hour holds for ICE if a judge determines the prisoner is a threat to public safety, but the amendment was voted down in April.

States act on detainers

Many experts agree that ICE detainers can be legally ignored if states allow sheriffs to do that.

“That detainer request is just that, a request, it’s not a requirement,” said Cassandra Charles, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, which is opposing Louisiana’s lawsuit to reverse a court-ordered ban on cooperation between Orleans Parish and ICE.

The general counsel for the North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, Eddie Caldwell, agreed that the detainers are voluntary under federal law.

The association supports a state bill now under consideration that would require not only the 48-hour detention but also a notice sent 48 hours before release to let ICE know the clock is running. The proposal has passed the House.

The notification matters, Caldwell said, because there can be criminal proceedings that take weeks or months, so ICE in many cases doesn’t realize the 48-hour window has started.

Tillis’ office said the senator’s disagreement with McFadden, a Democrat, and other sheriffs is about that notification.

“It’s not necessarily that [sheriffs] are breaking the law, but rather making it as difficult as possible for ICE to take prisoners into custody by refusing to do some basic things. Notification is important,” said Daniel Keylin, a senior adviser to Tillis.

States including California, Colorado and Massachusetts ban compliance with the ICE detainers, on the general principle that it’s not enough reason to hold people in jails when they’re otherwise free to go because of bail or an end to their criminal cases. Those three states have made recent moves to defend or fine-tune their rules.

California’s attorney general also has issued guidance to local jurisdictions based on a 2017 state law limiting cooperation with immigration authorities. That law withstood a court challenge under the first Trump administration.

Colorado has a law against holding prisoners more than six hours longer than required, and a new bill sent to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis last week would specify that even those six hours can’t be for the purpose of an immigration detainer.

Iowa, Tennessee and Texas are among the states requiring cooperation with detainers.

And Florida has gone further, requiring sheriffs to actively help ICE write detainers though official agreements in which local agencies sign up to help enforce immigration laws.

Cooperation boosts arrests

Such cooperation makes a big difference, experts say — jails are the easiest place to pick up immigrants for deportation, and when local sheriffs and police help out, there are more arrests.

“A larger share of ICE arrests and deportations are happening in places where local law enforcement is cooperative with ICE,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director for the Migration Policy Institute’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program, speaking at a recent webinar.

“A declining share of arrests and deportations are happening from places like California, where there are really strict limitations on local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE,” she added.

ICE is making about 600 immigration arrests daily, twice the rate as during the last year of the Biden administration, said Muzaffar Chishti, an attorney and policy expert at the Migration Policy Institute, speaking at the same event.

Reports on deportations are incomplete, Chishti said, but he estimated the current administration is on track to deport half a million people this year and is trying to get that number higher.

“The Trump administration has not been able to change the laws that are on the books, because only Congress can do that,” Chishti said. “It’s going to take congressional action for the Trump administration to achieve its aim of higher [arrest and deportation] numbers.”

President Donald Trump has added more pressure, last month requesting a list from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of sanctuary cities, which he says would face funding cuts. The administration also has sued some states, including Colorado, Illinois and New York, over their policies.

Asked for comment on the legality of funding cutoffs for sanctuary policies, Bondi’s office referred to a February memo in which she promised to “end funding to state and local jurisdictions that unlawfully interfere with federal law enforcement operations.” The memo cites a federal law saying local officials “may not prohibit, or in any way restrict” communication about immigration status.

Local jurisdictions in Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington joined a February lawsuit led by the city and county of San Francisco and Santa Clara County in California against a Trump administration executive order calling for defunding cities with sanctuary policies, calling the order “illegal and authoritarian.”

In April, a U.S. district court in California issued a preliminary injunction in that case preventing any funding cutoff over sanctuary policies to the cities and counties in the lawsuit. And on Friday, the federal judge, William Orrick, ruled that the injunction applies to any list of sanctuary jurisdictions the administration may target for funding cuts.

Trump’s new executive order seeking the list cannot be used as “an end run” around Orrick’s injunction, the judge wrote, while he decides the legality of detainer policies and other issues.

“The litigation may not proceed with the coercive threat to end all federal funding hanging over the Cities and Counties’ heads like the sword of Damocles,” Orrick wrote.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

The post States are telling sheriffs whether they can — or can’t — work with ICE appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

The content leans towards a Center-Right perspective due to its focus on the Trump administration’s immigration policies, particularly emphasizing local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE. The tone of the article is generally supportive of enforcement actions and policies that align with conservative views on immigration. It discusses the challenges faced by sheriffs who must decide whether to comply with federal detainer requests, and it highlights the role of conservative states and lawmakers in pushing for stricter immigration enforcement. While the article provides some context about the opposition, including legal challenges and resistance from Democratic-controlled states, it presents a clear focus on supporting immigration enforcement policies, which aligns with Center-Right positions. The content is not overtly partisan, but the framing suggests alignment with conservative priorities.

SUMMARY: The Armed Forces Day MRE Cook-off will take place on May 17th at the USS Battleship Memorial Park, celebrating military service members. Participants will face a blind challenge, using three MREs to create a cohesive dish, with some additional pantry ingredients allowed. The event will feature Pete Bl of Panini Pete and Jennifer Bird, with several judges. Armed Forces Day will also include a keynote by Congressman Moore, honoring gold star families and featuring a parachute demonstration. The public can participate by signing up at savvc.info. The event aims to support veterans and the military community.

Pete Blohme of Pinini Pete and Jennifer Byrd

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