HB 5722 amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to require the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General to deny visas, immigration benefits, relief, or admission to any noncitizen who "adheres to Sharia law," to revoke existing benefits for anyone found to adhere, and to remove such persons from the United States. It also ties revocation and removal to false statements about adherence under 18 U.S.C. §1001 and declares those executive determinations final and non-reviewable by any court.
This is a narrowly framed—but sweeping in effect—statutory exclusion that 1) converts "adherence to Sharia" into an express ground for inadmissibility and deportability, 2) mandates revocation and removal rather than leaving discretion to adjudicators, and 3) removes federal judicial review. The text leaves critical terms and standards undefined and creates immediate implementation questions for consular officers, DHS adjudicators, prosecutors, and counsel that go beyond ordinary visa screening practices.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill instructs the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Attorney General to deny or revoke any visa, immigration benefit, relief, or admission for an alien who "adheres to Sharia law," and to remove such aliens. It adds a consequence for false statements about adherence under 18 U.S.C. §1001 and states that agency determinations under the Act are final and not reviewable by courts.
Who It Affects
All noncitizens in any immigration posture—visa applicants, asylum seekers, green-card holders whose status the agencies could seek to revoke, and those seeking naturalization or relief—are potentially covered. Consular officers, DHS adjudicators and officers, DOJ attorneys, and immigration defense counsel will have to operationalize or respond to the new statutory ground.
Why It Matters
This bill substitutes a religion-linked exclusion for the ordinary, case-by-case inadmissibility framework, centralizes power in the executive, and eliminates judicial review—shifting not only legal outcomes but also the evidentiary and procedural burdens of enforcement onto agencies and affected individuals.
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What This Bill Actually Does
HB 5722 creates a categorical rule: if the executive determines that a noncitizen "adheres to Sharia law," that person cannot receive a visa, an immigration benefit, relief, or admission, and any such existing benefits may be revoked. The statute names the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Attorney General as the officials who must make and execute these determinations.
If an individual in the United States is found to adhere to Sharia, the bill requires revocation of immigration benefits and mandates that the person be treated as inadmissible or deportable and removed. The bill also connects false statements about adherence—prosecutable under 18 U.S.C. §1001—to automatic revocation and removal, so that a false answer on a visa or immigration form is statutorily tied to immigration consequences in the bill.Crucially, the bill inserts a finality provision: determinations made by the named Department heads "shall be final and shall not be subject to review by any court." That provision attempts to preclude federal litigation challenging an agency's finding of adherence, which is an unusual and consequential limitation on judicial oversight.The statute contains no working definition of "adheres to Sharia law," no evidentiary standard (preponderance, clear and convincing, reasonable suspicion), and no procedural protections (notice, opportunities to rebut, or administrative appeal).
Those omissions leave frontline officers and immigration judges to develop—by policy, training, or ad hoc practice—how to identify adherence, what evidence counts, and how to treat edge cases (for example, private religious belief versus public advocacy).Taken together, the bill converts a contested, fact-specific inquiry about an individual's beliefs and practices into a statutory exclusion with mandatory removal and no statutory judicial safety valve, creating obvious constitutional, prosecutorial, and operational questions for agencies and counsel.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill makes "adherence to Sharia law" an express ground for denial of any visa, immigration benefit, relief, or admission and names the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Attorney General as the decisionmakers.
It requires revocation of existing immigration benefits and mandates that any person found to adhere to Sharia be considered inadmissible or deportable and removed from the United States.
The bill ties false statements about adherence to Sharia—prosecutable under 18 U.S.C. §1001—to automatic revocation and removal, creating an explicit criminal-immigration consequence link.
Section 2(d) declares determinations under the Act final and not subject to review by any court, effectively attempting to strip judicial review of agency findings under this statute.
The bill contains no definition of "adheres to Sharia law," no evidentiary standard, and no procedural notice, appeal, or remedial mechanisms—leaving implementation criteria to the executive without statutory guardrails.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Provides the statute's short name, "Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act." This is purely titular and has no operational effect, but it signals the explicit focus of the substantive provisions that follow.
Categorical prohibition on benefits and admission for "adherents to Sharia law"
Directs the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Attorney General to deny any immigration benefit, visa, relief, or admission to any alien who "adheres to Sharia law." Practically, the provision converts "adherence" into a statutorily disqualifying characteristic and places the responsibility for screening and denial on consular and domestic adjudicators. The section does not define "adheres" or "Sharia law," nor does it prescribe how agencies must determine adherence (e.g., standards, timelines, or evidentiary rules). That omission forces agencies to set investigative practice and policy out of whole cloth or to rely on existing, imperfect indicators (statements, affiliations, online activity).
Revocation and mandatory removal
States that any alien in the United States found to be an adherent will have benefits or relief revoked, be considered inadmissible or deportable, and shall be removed. The language is mandatory—revocation and removal are commanded rather than discretionary—so it overrides ordinary prosecutorial or agency flexibility. This creates a statutory pathway to strip lawful status in cases where the executive finds adherence, raising questions about the interplay with INA protections that normally govern removal proceedings and potential statutory conflicts with established grounds and processes for cancellation, adjustment, or relief.
False-statement penalty linked to immigration consequences
Specifies that an alien who provides false statements under 18 U.S.C. §1001 about their adherence to Sharia to any federal officer shall have benefits revoked, be considered inadmissible or deportable, and be removed. This cross-reference ties criminal false-statement liability to immigration consequences in a single statutory directive. It makes denial or removal possible where an agency alleges a false statement, but it does not require a criminal conviction before immigration penalties follow, creating a civil-immigration consequence tethered to a criminal statute.
Finality: no judicial review
Declares any determination under the Act by the named Department heads "final and not subject to review by any court." This attempts to eliminate judicial oversight of both the substantive adherence determination and the removal actions that follow. The clause raises immediate separation-of-powers and due-process issues because it removes the ordinary avenue for judicial redress; it also increases the political and legal stakes for executive decisionmakers who must now make determinations that cannot be tested in court under the terms of this statute.
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Explore Immigration in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Executive immigration agencies (State, DHS, DOJ): Gain a clear statutory basis to deny, revoke, and remove on the specified ground, consolidating authority and reducing the need to rely on broader or more granular INA grounds.
- Border and removal practitioners: Agents, ICE, and DOJ trial attorneys receive a direct statutory tool to pursue removals tied to a named ground, which can simplify charging and case selection for enforcement-oriented offices.
- Political constituencies and advocacy groups that prioritize religiously framed immigration restrictions: Obtain an explicit statutory text they can cite in policy advocacy and enforcement contexts, increasing leverage in administrative and legislative fora.
Who Bears the Cost
- Noncitizens who practice Islam or are perceived to 'adhere to Sharia': Face exclusion, revocation of status, and mandatory removal on the basis of a religiously rooted label that the bill uses as a disqualifier.
- Consular officers, DHS adjudicators, and DOJ attorneys: Must develop definitions, evidence-gathering practices, and training to implement an undefined standard, increasing workload, litigation risk (despite the non-reviewability clause), and operational complexity.
- Immigration defense counsel and public-interest legal services: Face a new statutory ground that can produce expedited revocations and removals and that narrows opportunities for judicial relief, increasing pressure on counsel and potentially forcing more resource-intensive factfinding and record-building at early stages.
- U.S. foreign relations and diplomatic missions in Muslim-majority countries: Could see increased visa denials and diplomatic friction because consular officers will apply a novel, contested statutory criterion across visa categories.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is a classic trade-off between expansive executive control over borders and the rule-of-law protections that guard against religion-based exclusion: the bill answers security and exclusionist aims by converting a disputed religious characteristic into a statutory bar and by stripping judicial oversight, but in doing so it places significant power in the executive without definitions, standards, or procedural safeguards—increasing the risk of discriminatory, arbitrary, or constitutionally vulnerable outcomes.
The bill creates several unresolved legal and operational tensions. First, it relies on an undefined, religiously inflected concept—"adherence to Sharia law"—as an objective exclusion ground.
The lack of statutory definition forces agencies to decide what kinds of belief, practice, speech, or association qualify as adherence, and those doctrinal line-drawing problems will shape who is screened out in practice. Without an evidentiary standard or procedural protections (notice, opportunity to rebut, administrative appeal), agencies could rely on coarse proxies—nationality, speech, association, or religious practice—raising risks of viewpoint discrimination and profiling.
Second, the non-reviewability clause is unusually broad and presents both statutory and constitutional questions. While Congress has historically granted the political branches substantial authority over immigration, courts have not accepted unbounded elimination of judicial review where constitutional rights or statutory rights protections are at stake.
The clause also complicates ordinary checks on error or abuse: agencies would make final, unreviewable determinations that can terminate legal status, which increases the risk of arbitrary deprivation and creates pressure for administrative appeals or intra-agency safeguards that the bill does not supply.
Third, the cross-reference to 18 U.S.C. §1001 compounds problems. The bill ties false-statement findings (a criminal statute) to civil immigration consequences without requiring criminal conviction.
That linkage risks chilling applicants' willingness to speak openly, invites post-hoc factual recharacterizations in removal proceedings, and raises questions about the standard of proof the executive will apply when moving directly to revocation or deportation. Finally, the bill's mandatory language—"shall be removed"—collides with existing INA mechanisms for relief, parole, and withholding/deferral that the agencies or immigration judges currently administer, producing statutory and procedural friction that the text does not resolve.
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