Congressional MAGA Republicans are rushing to pass the Laken Riley Act, which would strip noncitizens of fundamental rights, permit indefinite detention regardless of legal status, and open the door to mass deportations.
American Civil Liberties Union warned that the bill seriously threatens civil liberties and violates bedrock constitutional principles, including eliminating due process rights and empowering rightwing state attorney generals to shape federal immigration policy.
The bill passed the House and is now in the Senate. Republicans want the bill on Trump’s desk to sign when he takes office on Jan. 20. Trump vows to begin mass deportations of individuals without legal status on the first day of his presidency, order the U.S. military to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, and end birthright citizenship, a fundamental Constitutional right.
“(The Laken Riley Act) is essentially a highway to mass deportation, and you can have any number of people picked up and put into the criminal justice system simply for being accused, with no conviction, no admission of guilt,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
The bill “will strengthen President-elect Trump’s hand in unleashing mass deportations on our communities. It will force immigration authorities to detain individuals accused of nonviolent theft offenses like shoplifting regardless of whether or not law enforcement even deems them as a threat,” said Sarah Mehta, ACLU senior border policy counsel.
“Mandating mass detention will make us less safe, sapping resources and diverting taxpayer money away from addressing public safety needs. Detaining a mother who admits to shoplifting diapers for her baby, or elderly individuals who admit to nonviolent theft when they were teenagers, is wasteful, cruel, and unnecessary,” said Mehta.
Current law allows ICE to mandatorily detain noncitizens without review by an immigration judge in a bond hearing when courts have convicted them of a crime. However, this unprecedented and likely unconstitutional bill radically changes federal law, wipes out due process rights for noncitizens, and would result in a significant spike in racial profiling of longtime residents.
Under current Senate rules, legislative sponsors need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and pass a bill. With Republicans united, defeating the legislation requires opposition from 41 Democratic senators. However, last week, 33 Democrats voted to advance the bill.
The Laken Riley Act is named after a young Georgia woman who was raped and murdered by a person from Venezuela without legal status. Authorities had previously arrested the perpetrator for shoplifting and subsequently released him.
Instead of focusing on the issue of violent crime or femicide, Republicans restricted the bill to minor nonviolent offenses like shoplifting, burglary, and other related crimes. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of femicide among advanced industrial countries. Yet, Republicans ignored this issue to exploit anti-immigrant hysteria even though immigrants without legal status commit far fewer crimes than citizens.
The rightwing is exploiting Riley’s tragic death to impose draconian repression on immigrants, whether they have legal status or not. The bill would throw due process out the window by authorizing the federal detention of immigrants with or without status who are arrested for a minor crime, like shoplifting, whether they are guilty or not. And once detained, federal officials can jail them indefinitely.
“The Laken Riley Act…undermine(s) the principle that people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Worse, this bill would let activist state attorneys general file harmful, pointless lawsuits against the federal government over immigration policy just to score political points,” said the Center for Immigrant Rights.
The Act even covers immigrants permitted to be in the U.S., such as Dreamers (DACA), asylum seekers, and those under Temporary Protected Status (TPS). It does not make an exception for minors.
The Act grants extraordinary power to state attorney generals over immigration policy, an authority granted under the Constitution to the Federal government. State officials would be allowed to sue the federal government for failure to detain noncitizens who commit nonviolent crimes. Such actions would threaten the entire immigration system with massive gridlock.
“This bill allows people like Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to hijack federal immigration policy. He could demand federal judges lock up asylum seekers en masse or block visas for doctors, engineers, or students from entire countries. Imagine one MAGA state deciding who can live and work in the United States. That’s what this bill allows,” said Indivisible co-leader Leah Greenberg.
By imposing blanket visa bans, the bill threatens to shut down legal immigration altogether, an aim of Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and other MAGA extremists.
By expanding mandatory detention, thousands of people could be swept up into jails and detention centers — at enormous taxpayer expense and diverting law enforcement resources — even when an immigration judge or immigration agent doesn’t think they pose a threat to the community or flight risk, warned the ACLU.
The bill incentivizes officers influenced by racism and anti-immigrant hate to commit racial profiling and arrest immigrants with or without legal status. It would potentially entail a colossal waste of federal resources to detain individuals while disrupting families, communities, and workplaces.
Republicans stoked anti-immigrant fears during the election and hammered Democratic candidates on immigration and border security. Some Democratic elected officials are reacting to the highly toxic anti-immigrant environment by making concessions on the issue to MAGA. Some hope that by supporting the legislation, they will be immune from GOP attacks. For example, Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa, and Rueben Gallego, D-Ariz, are co-sponsors of the Act.
But by giving in to anti-immigrant hysteria, these Democrats are greasing the skids for fascist authoritarianism and mass deportations and turning their backs on critical base constituencies of the Democratic Party. This shortsighted outlook is reminiscent of the fear that caused some to cave into passing the repressive Patriot Act following 9-11, only to regret it later profoundly.
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