Immigration lawyers fear Laken Riley’s bill could have wide-ranging effects once Trump takes office

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate this week is poised to take up a bill that lawyers and immigration experts say could have far-reaching consequences, including overwhelming federal courts with complaints from state attorneys general and putting some migrants – including children and teenagers – at risk of rapid detention and deportation.

Legislation, Laken Riley Act, P. 5it would greatly expand the ability to detain immigrants and give state prosecutors broad discretion to challenge federal immigration policy if it is enacted into law.

Experts fear the bill will aid fulfill President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations by requiring the US Department of Homeland Security to detain a non-US citizen for arrest, charge or conviction of petty theft – in response to murder The 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia, after whom the drug is named.

Laken Riley went for a run, and her roommates became concerned when she didn’t come home. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old immigrant from Venezuela, was convicted of murder last month and sentenced to life in prison. According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he allegedly entered the country illegally in 2022 and was charged with shoplifting, but ICE did not detain him.

In the presidential election, in which immigration was the main issue, this solution gained bipartisan support – 48 Democrats in the US House of Representatives voted for it, along with Republicans. An overwhelming majority of 32 Senate Democrats and one independent sided with the Republicans in a procedural vote to move the bill forward.

Senate Democrats argue that a procedural vote is an opportunity to discuss the bill and make amendments, but it is unclear whether Senate Republicans will agree to the process.

The bill’s lead author, Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, told the Senate before the procedural vote that the bill “is necessary because it is simple.”

“I want to make it clear that the only people subject to this bill are criminal illegal aliens,” Britt said. “These people crossed our border illegally and, upon arrival, committed a crime. That’s what we’re talking about.”

But immigration lawyers argue that the bill would not only affect undocumented people, but would ensnare some immigrants with legal status, lead to the detention of children, question immigration judges’ decisions on release and bail and could disrupt visa issuance internationally.

They argue that the bill, in terms of its definition of “inadmissible immigrants” as the persons affected, is problematic.

“This will lead to mass deportations,” said Nithya Nathan-Pineau, a lawyer and strategist at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

She said if someone is detained and unable to defend themselves – because immigrants are not guaranteed a lawyer under US law – they could easily end up with a conviction.

“This conviction could result in their deportation,” she added. “It is intended to funnel people into detention centers so they can be deported.”

Heidi Altman, federal director of counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, expressed concern about the bill because immigrant communities have long been subject to tight police surveillance and a greater likelihood of interacting with law enforcement.

“Gross racial disparities in policing and arrests persist in the United States, so basing immigrant detention on arrest alone quite clearly and inevitably drives even greater racial disparities from the criminal system to the immigration system,” she said.

New powers of prosecutors general

If it becomes law, it would give state attorneys general broad legal standing to challenge federal immigration law. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the left-leaning American Immigration Council, said the provision is intended to circumvent a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.

In the 2023 caseThe Supreme Court has ruled that Texas and Louisiana do not have the right to challenge the Biden administration’s deportation priorities.

Additionally, the bill would allow state attorneys general to challenge immigration judges’ bail decisions.

Altman said U.S. immigration courts are already burdened, adding that this type of power given to attorneys general would undermine the authority of immigration judges “and swamp federal courts with decisions that have already been made by immigration judges under review.”

“You cannot have a functioning judicial system of any kind that can be challenged at any time and on any individual decision by any state attorney general who has a political ax to grind,” she said.

Such powers could impact international diplomacy, Reichlin-Melnick said.

These state attorneys general could ask a federal court for an injunction forcing the U.S. Department of State to stop issuing visas to a country that has refused to admit citizens eligible for deportation, known as recalcitrant countries. Some of these countries include China, Cuba, India and Russia.

“You can therefore have one state attorney general and one federal judge dictating international policy towards other countries around the world and potentially forcing the secretary of state to impose sweeping visa bans on citizens of entire countries,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

Altman said this type of state visa-withholding power “has the potential to be some of the most destabilizing in terms of the operation of the broader government as well as foreign relations.”

“There are concerns regarding (a) the ability of a foreign country to trust that the federal government effectively exercises unified control over visa policy, beyond the destabilizing effect this would have on the ability of citizens of any destination country to continue to travel to and from the United States for a variety of reasons important for trade and the economy, such as work visas and student visas,” she said.

program IF

While the Republican-led bill seeks to require the detention of immigrants without legal authority who have been arrested, charged or convicted of theft, shoplifting or burglary, it could also impact people with disabilities discretionary legal statusfor example, people on parole or under the DACA program, Altman said.

“The (DACA) regulation states that the Department of Homeland Security has the discretion and authority to terminate DACA status at any time and on any basis,” she said. “And so if the Laken Riley Act were to be passed and require mandatory detention of people who have committed theft crimes, under the Trump administration it would likely happen that if a DACA recipient was arrested, they would be detained and DHS would have the authority to simultaneously terminate their DACA status “

Nathan-Pineau added that because of the legality of DACA currently being challenged in the courtsrecipients are “at risk because deferred action may be revoked at any time.”

Altman said green card immigrants, typically called lawful eternal residents, would not be subject to the mandatory detention requirement unless they are deemed to be removed for violating immigration law.

With more than one million people on Temporary Protected Status, which means their country is considered too hazardous to return to and therefore they can work and live in the United States, Altman stated that “we believe that TPS recipients they could not be subject to (the bill), but its wording is quite ambiguous.”

Nathan-Pineau raised the issue that the bill makes no provision for teenage immigrants and would expose them to mandatory detention.

“There is no exception for children,” she added.

Nathan-Pineau said that in her work as an immigration attorney, she often represents youth accused of shoplifting groceries.

“This is one of the most common interactions between my young clients and law enforcement,” she said.

“Pretty extreme in American law.”

Altman said DHS has broad authority to detain immigrants, but “this bill expands a particularly harsh type of detention that we call mandatory detention because people detained under this authority cannot even seek a bond hearing.”

“Their detention is simply automatic, and this bill expands that category of detention to persons solely based on an arrest or charge, regardless of whether that arrest ever results in a conviction,” she said. “It’s quite extreme in American law.”

Reichlin-Melnick noted that there is no time limit in the bill for the petty theft charge to apply.

“If you were arrested for theft at age 13 and now you’re an undocumented immigrant, you’ve been here for 30 years and you’re applying for a Green Card through your spouse, you would be (considered for) mandatory detention,” he said.

Nathan-Pineau said mandatory detention already applies to immigrants who have “committed quite serious crimes” and is not considered a property crime.

Nathan-Pineau said that if the bill were to become law, it would require the detention of her former client. This client was a mother who experienced violence when the perpetrator refused to give her money for groceries to feed her children, so she shoplifted and was arrested, Nathan-Pineau said.

“We want people to think about things like this when we think about property crimes and also burglary,” she said. “These are the types of crimes that can land you in jail for months or even years.”

Last updated: 11:48, January 14, 2025

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