One of the first bills sent to President Donald Trump after his inauguration on Monday would greatly expand immigration detention and make it easier for states to influence immigration policy. And it has already passed one house of Congress with the support of a significant number of Democrats.
The bill, the Laken Riley Act, is named after a young woman killed last February by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. Her killer was sentenced to life in prison.
Reilly has become a cause célèbre for Republicans, who argue that his death is the result of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies that allowed him to walk free despite shoplifting charges. The GOP broadly supports the bill, but some Democrats, facing major losses in 2024, have cited Americans’ frustration with the immigration status and Record high border crossings Under Biden, supporting or considering it: 48 of the 215 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted in favor. Two Democratic senators, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, co-sponsored the Senate version, though it is unclear whether it will win over the five other Senate Democrats likely to need it to pass.
The bill has two main parts:
- It would mandate that the federal government detain all immigrants accused of theft and other related crimes. The man convicted of Riley’s murder was charged with shoplifting before his death but failed to appear in court; Bill’s supporters argue that if he had been arrested on these charges, Riley would still be alive.
- It would give states a broad right to sue over federal immigration policies.
Proponents of the bill argue that it would be a major step forward for public safety. But if passed, the bill could also strain existing immigration enforcement resources, infringe on immigrants’ due process rights, and create a chaotic (and potentially unconstitutional) situation in which states are allowed to set federal immigration policy.
The Laken Riley Act would greatly expand immigration detention
Right now, federal law mandates that immigrants who have committed certain serious crimes, including murder, rape, domestic violence and some drug offenses, be detained. But outside of these categories, federal immigration officials have discretion.
In 2021, the Biden administration issued Policy Guidelines Prioritizing national security threats, public safety threats, or “border security threats” (those who have recently entered the United States without authorization). Otherwise, the Department of Homeland Security urged individual immigration officials to use their prosecutorial discretion—essentially, to leave everyone else alone.
The argument was that immigration agencies have limited resources for enforcement, and Biden targeted those resources with what he saw as the main threat among the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
“The federal government will not have enough money or manpower to deport every undocumented noncitizen,” said Stephen Yale-Lohr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law. “Courts are not equipped to make detailed inquiries about who should be prioritized for deportation.”
The Laken Relay Act would largely support those enforcement priorities, which require detaining a much larger population of undocumented immigrants.
The bill would require federal immigration authorities to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft and other related crimes, such as shoplifting or theft. Charges triggering mandatory detention may be made in the United States or in another country. For example, if someone is accused of theft in Venezuela and it comes to the attention of US immigration officials, the alleged thief must be detained on that basis.
This would be a major expansion of immigration detention and deportation.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement anticipates that the bill will Cost $83 billion Over the next three years, that’s enough for 118,500 additional detention beds, 40,000 more staff, and a 25 percent increase in deportation flights. That updated estimate, which was circulated among Democratic leadership Monday, is many times higher than ICE’s previous estimate of $3.2 billion. guess.
These immigrants will be detained even if they are not convicted and have no opportunity for a bond hearing. Currently, it is rare in the United States to hold someone accused of a crime without a bond hearing, even when the crime is as serious as murder. In the case of immigrants, mandatory immigration detention may actually reasonably impede their due process. It is difficult for them to show up for trial in their criminal cases.
Immigrants, even without documentation, have the same right to due process as anyone else in the United States, and immigrant advocates have argued that this raises serious due process concerns: It increases the risk of an innocent person being detained on a prolonged basis. Limited access to legal counsel that could help them win a case challenging their deportation.
“This potential provision could be unconstitutional because of our Fifth Amendment surrounding freedom,” said Adrielle Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. “Its impact is far-reaching in the human context.”
The bill would expand the states’ role in shaping federal immigration policy
Another major part of the bill would give states the automatic right to file lawsuits challenging federal immigration policies on detention and visas, or decisions in individual immigration cases, if they can prove they suffered financial losses of more than $100.
It’s a process that Republicans say is necessary to ensure the federal government is complying with immigration detention orders under the law. But in practice, this means courts will have to rule on the merits of the state’s claims rather than being able to dismiss them outright, and potentially be inundated with such cases.
“You see any number of really hostile state officials filing lawsuits to change decisions they don’t like,” said Sara Mehta, ACLU senior border policy counsel.
That could include, for example, challenging the issuance of visas to citizens of some countries that Republicans have taken a hard line against, such as China, he said. This will have alarming implications not only for US immigration policy, but also for states that dictate US foreign policy and will have major implications for US relations with both adversaries and allies. It could also make for open season on decisions made by thousands of immigration line officers in the course of their daily work.
It’s possible that Democratic states could try to use the bill to challenge federal immigration policy, perhaps stemming the tide. Arriving in the Blue City – Something is an event State and local Democratic leaders complained — though it’s unclear exactly on what basis they’ll do so.
Mehta said the provision allowing litigation was “clearly constitutional overreach” and the court could recognize it if the bill becomes law. He noted that the US Supreme Court has already ruled in a 2023 case in Texas challenging the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement priorities that such policies recognize the need for a unified US response to immigration, under the exclusive purview of the federal government based on the Constitution. .
“States should not interfere in foreign policy or these immigration decisions because they don’t have the expertise,” Mehta said.
If the bill becomes law and survives legislative scrutiny, “the result is that the courts will become the final arbiter of immigration policy,” Yale-Loher said.
Some Senate Democrats are now pushing for changes to the bill, including deferring provisions on immigration cases. The Senate Debate started again Amended those on Wednesday afternoon.
If the law is passed without amendment, it could sow chaos, inviting lawsuits challenging each new regulation or policy memo without addressing the larger problems of the US’s broken immigration system, which hasn’t been meaningfully reformed since 1986.
These problems include an undersourced asylum system that is ill-equipped to handle diverse populations; processing people in a humane and orderly manner at the border and expeditiously returning them to their home countries if they are not eligible for protection in the United States; the lack of legal pathways in the United States designed for current economic and humanitarian needs; Millions of undocumented immigrants who have taken root in the United States have no way to obtain legal status; And factors push people out of their countries that will drive people to migrate.
Laken Riley will leave all of that unresolved.
