A GOP-led immigration bill has gained some support from Democrats that purports to strengthen enforcement against undocumented immigrants who commit minor crimes.
The bill is "exploitatively" titled the Laken Riley Act, Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote Thursday evening. The legislation is named after a 22-year-old nursing student who authorities said was slain by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant last year.
It calls for mandatory detention for undocumented immigrants accused of thefts including burglary, larceny, and even shoplifting. It also expands the authority of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — who would have to detain and take custody of such offenders — and allows state attorneys general to sue the federal government over alleged failures revolving around immigration enforcement should any harm come to their state or residents.
Rampell said Democrats now "fear appearing weak on illegal immigration and soft on crime" — and are mistakenly throwing their support behind the proposal, which she called a "terrible, demagogic bill."
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"It would not have prevented its namesake’s tragic death. Worse, it would complicate law enforcement’s ability to prioritize public safety threats and give cranks in state government the ability to shut down legal immigration, nationwide," argued Rampell.
She noted that the legislation was initially proposed as a "messaging bill" — the text even included overt shots at President Joe Biden and his administration as well as "some bonkers anti-immigrant stuff that was unlikely to ever become law."
Under the bill, people accused of shoplifting, even those found innocent in court or who had their charges dropped, would be detained indefinitely, without the possibility of bail.
"In other words, the Department of Homeland Security would be required to jail even falsely accused people indefinitely, at taxpayer expense," Rampell said.
"This would be a wild departure from, oh, the Constitution’s basic due process protections," she emphasized.
The bill specifies immigrants deemed "inadmissible" including so-called "dreamers" and law-abiding undocumented immigrants who've been allowed to stay. Such people could find themselves targets of "racist neighbors," "vengeful" bosses and co-workers, and jilted lovers.
Rampell then pointed to what she called the "looniest" part of the legislation: giving states "veto" power over federal immigration officials.
"Specifically, it would allow state officials to seek a court order to shut down all legal immigration from any country that has proved troublesome for U.S. immigration enforcement," she said, adding that a state could, say, sue to block researchers and engineers from a country like India, which hasn't fully cooperated on deportations.
"What does any of this have to do with the wrenching loss of Laken Riley, or really any problem in our dysfunctional immigration system? It doesn’t. It just creates more problems — humanitarian, economic and constitutional. Democratic lawmakers (and any fair-minded Republicans still out there) should learn what they’re voting for before they get manipulated into doing so," she concluded.
