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Jackley calls for improved legal immigration policy while launching his campaign for Congress • South Dakota Searchlight [1]
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Date: 2025-09-09
STURGIS — In a speech formally launching his campaign for Congress on Tuesday, South Dakota Republican Marty Jackley signaled a desire to bring workers into the country legally while preventing unauthorized immigration.
“We need to have a national immigration policy that considers public safety and the workforce,” Jackley said. “We need to have E-Verify and visas working. I promise you I’ll be committed to doing that as your congressman.”
E-Verify is a web-based system that allows employers to confirm their employees’ eligibility to work in the United States. The system has been beset with well-chronicled problems, including a Cato Institute study alleging thousands of people lost out on jobs because E-Verify incorrectly flagged them.
Jackley made his campaign announcement at the Loud American restaurant and bar in Sturgis, on the edge of the Black Hills, where many employers in the area depend on workers with visas to fill seasonal tourism jobs. A visa is a document granting foreigners permission to visit, work or study in the country.
Jackley serves as South Dakota’s attorney general. He’ll continue in that role through next year while running for Congress. There’s an open race for the state’s lone U.S. House seat next year, because Republican South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson is running for governor.
In Jackley’s speech to a room packed with dozens of supporters, he touched on his crime-fighting credentials and his experience serving on a council that advised President Donald Trump on law enforcement issues.
On economic development, Jackley pledged to work toward a “fair playing field” and boasted of winning a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, which paved the way for states to force certain online retailers to pay state sales taxes. Jackley said the ability to avoid sales taxes gave online retailers an unfair advantage over local stores.
He also recapped his record on government accountability, including his prosecution of six cases since last year against former state employees for allegations related to their work for state government.
In one of the highest-profile cases, Jackley won a guilty verdict at trial in April against a former Department of Social Services worker who stole $1.8 million from the state over a 13-year period. In response to the rash of state employee crimes, Jackley also supported a package of four bills passed during this year’s legislative session that expanded the investigatory authority of the state auditor; strengthened the Board of Internal Controls; instituted mandatory reporting requirements for state employees and penalties for failing to report; and established protections for whistleblowers.
“I brought legislation so that we can better protect the taxpayer dollars and what’s been going on in Pierre, and I’ll do the same thing if you send me to Washington,” he said.
If Jackley wins, he would be the first person with roots in South Dakota’s less populated West River region — the area west of the Missouri River — to represent the state in the U.S. House since Republican John Thune held the seat from 1997 to 2003. Thune, whose hometown is Murdo, is now the U.S. Senate majority leader.
Jackley, 54, grew up in Sturgis and still has a ranch in the area, along with another ranch near Pierre. After earning an electrical engineering degree from South Dakota Mines, he added a law degree from the University of South Dakota. He served as the U.S. attorney for South Dakota from 2006 to 2009, and then as attorney general for the state from 2009 to 2019.
Term limits prevented him from seeking another consecutive term as attorney general in the 2018 elections. He sought the Republican nomination for governor that year and lost by 12 points in the primary election to Kristi Noem, who went on to serve as governor until leaving earlier this year to lead the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for Trump. Jackley ran for attorney general again in 2022 and was unopposed in the general election.
Besides Jackley, at least one other Republican — state Sen. Casey Crabtree of Madison — has formed a fundraising committee to potentially seek the U.S. House seat. That sets up a possible race in the primary election on June 2, 2026, to determine the Republican nominee before the general election on Nov. 3, 2026.
Democrats may have their own U.S. House primary race with at least three federal statements of candidacy filed so far by Scott Schlagel of Dell Rapids, and Billy Mawhiney and Nikki Gronli, both of Sioux Falls.
Jackley’s candidacy for U.S. House creates an open race for attorney general next year. At least one person — Lance Russell, the Republican state’s attorney of Fall River and Oglala Lakota counties — has announced his intention to seek the job.
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