The House on Tuesday passed H. R. 8282, which compels President Biden “To impose sanctions with respect to the International Criminal Court engaged in any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.” The legislation is a response to the ICC’s prosecutor pursuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The new House law states that if the International Criminal Court is engaging in any attempt to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person, the President shall impose sanctions on any foreigners who were involved in those ICC actions.
The sanctions include property blocking, aliens who are involved in the ICC actions would be inadmissible for US visas, and their current visas would be revoked. The law also imposes economic penalties in accordance with section 206 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The GOP bill was introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tx) and co-sponsored by more than 60 Republicans, passed by a vote of 247 to 155, with support from 42 Democrats.
Several pro-Israel Democrats voted against the bill and expressed their willingness to try and produce a better, bipartisan bill. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) told Axios: “There are many ways to draft reasonable sanctions … we should sanction the particular prosecutor for what he did.” Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) said she preferred a bipartisan bill “with better language.”
There are currently efforts being made to produce a Senate version of the bill that the White House could endorse, but Senate Democrats have not been able to convince Republicans to drop language that would appear to suggest the US is interfering with the workings of an international court.
In 2020, under President Donald Trump, when the ICC wanted to investigate the actions of US military officials in Afghanistan, the US imposed sanctions against ICC officials, which the Biden White House revoked in 2021.
