On January 29, 2025, President Trump signed into law the Laken Riley Act which targets undocumented immigrants for detention and deportation if they are “charged” with crimes including nonviolent crimes such as shoplifting.
Contents of the Laken Riley Act
The law mandates detention of people who are arrested, charged or admit to committing such a crime, without requiring that they first be convicted.
The law further allows Attorney Generals of each of the 50 states to sue the U.S. Attorney General and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if an immigrant with uncertain or contested legal status who is paroled into the country commits a crime that harms either the state or one of its residents physically or financially, if the value of the harm is more than $100.
It is unclear whether this section of the law is Constitutional.
A majority of Democrats and immigrant rights groups criticized the Liken Riley Act, saying that it is an anti-immigrant proposal disguised as a public safety measure.
“Mandatory detention has always been reserved for people who are convicted of crimes and actually commit crimes,” Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin said. “Expanding the requirement to include people who have been accused of – and not charged for — minor crimes such as shoplifting collapses the distinction” between those offenses and more serious crimes.
“In the wake of tragedy we are seeing a fundamental erosion of our civil rights,” said Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a New York Democrat. “In this bill, if a person is so much as accused of a crime, if someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they would be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court.”
Here is what the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) had to say about the Laken Riley Act:
“The death of Laken Riley is tragic and ensuring public safety and the effective operation of and compliance with immigration laws should be a top priority for the nation’s elected leaders. Unfortunately, the Laken Riley Act does not accomplish these aims. Despite its purported aims, S.5 will impede local criminal law enforcement and create chaos in enforcement by empowering states to challenge federal immigration policy.”
The Laken Riley Act authorizes individual states to bring costly and time-consuming litigation against the federal government whenever a state believes the federal government is improperly implementing many federal immigration laws.
The bill would also mandate the unnecessary apprehension and detention of undocumented immigrants convicted of or only arrested for certain crimes, including low level misdemeanor offenses such as shoplifting.
- The provisions in the Laken Riley Act would allow individual states to dictate immigration policy for the nation by allowing states to sue the government. Further, a state could sue to cease visa issuance to entire countries.
- By allowing states to sue the federal government over immigration policy, the bill would overwhelm the courts with litigation from states. The bill raises constitutional concerns by providing automatic standing to states who file politically motivated lawsuits against the federal government.
- The Laken Riley Act will interfere with criminal prosecutions and individuals will not be able to attend criminal court hearings while detained.
- The bill is unnecessary. Immigration law already mandates detention of people who have committed serious crimes.
It is estimated that the bill will cost American taxpayers $83 billion over the next 3 years according to Democrats on the Appropriations Committee.
Who Supported and Who Opposed the Laken Riley Act
All Republicans and a substantial number of Democrats in Congress supported the bill.
The bill was supported by organizations including the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Association of Mature American Citizens.
The bill was opposed by organizations including the American Immigration Council, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the National Education Association, the National Organization for Women, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the United Steelworkers, the United Church of Christ, the National Association of Social Workers, the National Council of Churches, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.