4 dozen House Democrats helped pass MAGA’s xenophobic Laken Riley Act. WTH, Democrats, what you doing?!?

(nilc.org) The Politics of Scapegoating Threaten Constitutional Protections

The Laken Riley Act is a manifestation of cynical politics. The majority is manipulating a personal tragedy to scapegoat immigrants. In reality, there is no correlation between immigration status and criminality. This bill is not a public safety measure, but rather an attack on established constitutional protections that would do nothing to keep communities safe if enacted into law.

5 things to know about the Laken Riley Act:

The bill would significantly disrupt prosecutors’ ability to proceed with criminal charges. Under this bill, immigration authorities would be required to take a person into immigration custody after a theft related arrest, even if a criminal judge found them to present no risk and released them on bail. The person would then be stuck in immigration detention with no ability to request release, even to attend their criminal court hearing on the underlying charges. Prosecutors already frequently face significant challenges in getting people transported from immigration custody to criminal court for ongoing proceedings; the bill would compound this problem greatly.

 The bill would hobble the executive branch’s ability to make immigration policy, whether a Democrat or Republican is in the White House. The bill guarantees states standing to sue the federal government over a breathtakingly wide array of immigration-related actions ranging from detention and visa policy to detention and release decisions in individualimmigration cases. Federal agencies, under Democrat or Republican control, would face litigation at every turn from states governed by the opposing political party. Administrations would likely stop even trying to issue new immigration policies when faced with endless litigation over every single memo and regulation.

The bill is a recipe for chaos in the federal courts – chaos the Constitution intended to avoid. The doctrine of “standing” is a constitutional doctrine (based on Article III’s requirement that a case or controversy exist for the federal courts to intervene) that guarantees courts are not wasting their time on disputes where there is no potential harm for the courts to ameliorate. Yet the Laken Riley Act provides blanket standingregardless of whether a state has any interest whatsoever in the case or policy being challenged. Without the ability to dismiss for lack of standing, the federal courts would immediately be drowning in immigration lawsuits.

The bill is duplicative – the federal government already has the authority to detain all people facing deportation proceedings. The bill amends the “mandatory detention” provision of federal immigration law to apply to undocumented people who are charged with, arrested for, or convicted of any theft-related offense. But the Department of Homeland Security already has statutory authority to detain any undocumented person facing deportation proceedings including those charged with a criminal offense. What the bill does is apply “mandatory detention,” requiring detention without any opportunity to even requestrelease on bond. In practice, this means the bill would require the government to detain an undocumented mother arrested on charges of shoplifting diapers without even granting her a bond hearing, for the duration of her deportation proceedings.

Requiring no-bond detention solely on the basis of a charge or arrest raises serious due process concerns.Prolonged detention without access to an individualized bail or bond hearing is an extreme measure in American law. Nearly all people facing criminal charges in the criminal justice system are entitled to an individualized bond hearing, even on charges as serious as murder. This bill is particularly extreme because it applies mandatory immigration detention solely on the basis of an arrest or charge, risking the prolonged detention of people innocent of the charges brought against them. These provisions also exacerbate racial disparities because Black and Brown people are arrested at disproportionately high rates throughout the United States.

(theHill) A number of Democrats had indicated heading into the procedural vote that they would also vote for the bill in its current form on final passage, with Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) signing on as co-sponsors. 

Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) all also indicated they would vote for the bill in its current form. 

“On the first day of the 119th Congress, my good friend, Republican Leader Thune, said he wants to make the Senate a place ‘where all members should have a chance to make their voices …heard.’ Well, this bill would be a fine place to start,” Schumer said ahead of the vote. 

“We should allow debate and amendments on the bill. This is an important issue. We should have a debate and amendments,” he said, reminding his colleagues that this wasn’t a vote on final passage. “This is a motion to proceed, a vote that says we should have a debate, and should have amendments.”

This New Immigration Bill That’s About to Pass Is a Horrifying Trojan Horse

(Slate) “This cross-party support might create the impression that this legislation really is what Republicans claim: a common-sense fix to a broken system that will keep undocumented criminals off the streets. But that is a gross mischaracterization. Rather, the Laken Riley Act would impose sweeping changes to the immigration system that raise serious constitutional concerns. It would penalize immigrants who live and work in the U.S. legally, subjecting them to indefinite detention without being convicted or even charged with a crime. And it would transfer a massive amount of power to state attorneys general and district court judges, who could effectively wrest control over immigration enforcement from the executive branch. These judges could, upon a state’s request, ban the issuance of all visas to residents of entire countries like India.

In short, under the guise of punishing a small number of lawbreaking undocumented immigrants, the act would curtail legal immigration and subject law-abiding immigrants to detention and deportation. It is baffling that so many Democrats would sign on to such a cruel and constitutionally dubious scheme.

Republicans have championed the Laken Riley Act by trumpeting the tragic story of its namesake, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered by a man who entered the country without authorization. They cynically framed the killing as part of a migrant crime wave, which Donald Trump seized upon in his presidential campaign. In reality, this crime wave does not exist: Undocumented immigrants are significantly less likely than American-born citizens to commit crimes of all kinds, including violent offenses. And the federal government already has the power to detain and deport undocumented immigrants who break the law. GOP leaders have nonetheless fast-tracked the bill, as if it were an overdue solution to a pressing problem. And by rushing its passage, they have obscured profoundly troubling features buried in the bill’s text.

The first of these glossed-over details is the fact that the Laken Riley Act would not only target undocumented immigrants “convicted of crimes” of theft, as its sponsors assert. It would also apply to those who are charged but never convicted, as well as those who are arrested but never charged. An individual who is mistakenly arrested because of a police officer’s own error would therefore be ensnared by the law. So would a person who is wrongfully arrested because of racial profiling, prosecutorial malice, or other unconstitutional motives. The same is true of a person who faces charges that are later dropped. Under the act, the government must detain all these individuals without bond, a punishment that is difficult to square with due process.

The second detail is the act’s startling scope: It does not only apply to undocumented immigrants, but also to people who live and work in this country legally. As immigration attorney David Isaacson has explained, the law would clearly apply to Dreamers—who are authorized to reside here, at least for now. It would also apply to refugees who entered the country without permission but have since been granted asylum. And, due to a quirk in federal law, it would even apply to legal immigrants who leave and reenter the country while awaiting issuance of their green card. Finally, the act applies to minors who are arrested or charged with a crime, despite Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego’s false claim to the contrary. Under this legislation, an 11-year-old asylum-seeker whose parents brought him into the country without authorization would be forced into mandatory detention if he were arrested for swiping a candy bar.

The third detail, and perhaps the most alarming one, involves the Laken Riley Act’s extraordinary reallocation of power to states and federal courts. As the Supreme Court has confirmed too many times to count, the Constitution assigns primary responsibility for immigration enforcement to the executive branch. Both Congress and the court have long recognized presidents’ prosecutorial discretion to prioritize the removal of certain undocumented immigrants over others in light of the practical impossibility of deporting them all. The act would upend that balance by empowering states to seek federal court orders overruling the executive branch’s individual immigration decisions and imposing mandatory detention in individual cases. A state’s attorney general could, for instance, ask a federal judge to order the detention of a specific migrant who was released from custody. A state attorney general could also sue the federal government over a policy that implements prosecutorial discretion by deprioritizing the deportation of certain migrants. States like Texas could clog federal courts’ dockets with an unceasing stream of lawsuits against the federal government urging judges to lock up more immigrants. And judges would be obligated to grant their requests under the act.

As the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick has pointed out, there’s an even more alarming feature buried in the bill: a novel grant of authority for federal courts to issue travel bans against entire countries. The legislation would let these courts prohibit the government from granting visas to residents of any country that does not accept deportations from the U.S. In other words, a foreign country that won’t let the U.S. deport its nationals back into its borders is subject to a judicially imposed visa ban. Many countries, including China and India, do not cooperate with the United States’ deportation demands. Under the Laken Riley Act, courts could prevent every resident of these countries from obtaining a visa. That includes visas for skilled workers, students, medical treatment, business travel—all of it would be shut down, likely setting off diplomatic crises that the president would have little leeway to resolve.”

(Rolling Stone) “Some of these “yes” votes represent a remarkable shift. “Immigration is personal for me,” Fetterman, who is married to a former undocumented immigrant, wrote on X during his Senate campaign two years ago. He noted his wife “lived in America undocumented for years after fleeing violence in Brazil when she was 7. I wouldn’t have a family if it weren’t for immigration. It’s what makes America, America.”

Fetterman recently pledged to protect “Dreamers,” or undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. As journalist Pablo Manríquez notes, the Laken Riley Act would mandate the detention of Dreamers over minor offenses. 

Ossoff, for his part, said during a 2020 campaign debate, “We can have an immigration policy that puts American workers first, that provides that path to legal status, that protects Dreamers, secures our borders, and doesn’t violate the human rights of innocent people seeking a better life or fleeing persecution.” 

The American Civil Liberties Union has opposed the Laken Riley Act on the grounds that it violates immigrants’ basic rights. The organization wrote in a recent letter that mandatory detention “flies in the face of our Constitution,” adding: “The Fifth Amendment protects all ‘persons’ — including immigrants — from the deprivation of libery with due process of law.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights similarly warned lawmakers: “Mandatory immigration detention on the basis of a mere arrest is unprecedented, and it would invite abuses that almost certainly would disproportionately impact people of color.”

It would be easier to entertain the idea from various elite Democrats that they need to work with Trump if so many of them hadn’t spent years insisting that Trump is an authoritarian — if not fascist — madman and a threat to democracy who they feared would jail them if allowed to return to power.”

(AZcentral) “Deporting criminals, including shoplifters, is a no brainer. But the Laken Riley Actisn’t that simple.

The legislation cruising through Congress does not just expand deportation of non-violent offenders but also strips due process and clears the way for states to meddle with immigration enforcement.

A lot of attention is on the fact that Democrats, including Arizona U.S. Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, are eagerly backing — and in Gallego’s case, even championing — the bill.

Why are Democrats turning on migrants now? Because being tough on migrants is suddenly en vogue in Donald Trump’s America, regardless of the broader and unintended consequences.

Laken Riley Act isn’t what it seems

Selling the legislation as merely deporting criminals is politically convenient. Americans will eat that up in one gulp. After all, who can possibly defend criminals?

But don’t be fooled by soundbites.

The legislation, which cleared the House with the support of 48 Democrats and will almost certainly pass the Senate, is a lot more complex than simply locking up and deporting low-level criminals.

The Laken Riley Act grew from the killing of a Georgia nursing student by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.

The reasoning here is that Laken Riley would still be alive, had her murderer been kicked out of the country when he was first caught shoplifting.

I sympathize with that sentiment and understand the importance of not letting anyone off the hook for stealing or committing any other type of crime.

But this legislation is bad as written.

The bill offers no due process

Where is the presumed innocence until proven guilty?

The bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to lock up anyone here illegally who is accused of burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting.

The key word here is “accused.” It means detaining or deporting without due process, without letting the criminal justice system adjudicate each case, which is a cornerstone of America.

Who cares, if these people shouldn’t be in the United States in the first place? Because it undermines the application of justice selectively. Once we erode that, there’s no telling what comes next for others.

States can interfere with enforcement

Immigration enforcement has been the sole responsibility of the federal government. This legislation changes that.

It allows any state to sue the feds for “alleged failures” in immigration enforcement or if the “failure caused the state or its residents harm.”

Vanessa Cárdenas of America’s Voice argues that the legislation empowers “anti-immigrant zealots … to overturn longstanding precedent” and “take the reins of federal immigration policy and throw our out-of-date immigration system into more chaos.”

That could lead to inconsistent immigration enforcement policies across states, undermining federal authority. It might not happen overnight, but that still can’t be good.

States would have veto power over visas

Still think the legislation is just about deporting shoplifters? Think again.

Under this legislation, states could seek to ban visas from countries like China and India if such countries delay or don’t accept their deported nationals.

It sends people underground, undermining safety

The strategy is clearly designed to further terrorize undocumented immigrants and root them out, which would work to an extent. Especially since many local authorities can stop them for anything, including a broken taillight, and turn them over to immigration.

But with that kind of enforcement usually comes racial profiling of entire communities. We’ve seen it. Anyone remember former Sheriff Joe Arpaio and what he did in Maricopa County?
Anyone brown becomes a target, including U.S. citizens. And undocumented immigrants will go underground, refusing to report crimes against them or anyone else.

Nobody is safe when that happens.

Republicans and now Democrats, too, want you to believe the Laken Riley Act is about deporting shoplifters.

Don’t be fooled.

It’s a power grab by states to dismantle federal authority over immigration enforcement.”