By Pamela Cruz and Emma Garcia. Peninsula 360 Press.
Listen to this note:
The Laken Riley Act, which would allow the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes, is one step away from being approved and signed by Donald Trump, who was sworn in as the 47th president of the American union on Monday.
Approval could become one of the first victories of this new administration in immigration matters, after President Trump himself said in his inaugural speech that he will declare a national emergency on the country's southern border, immediately stop "illegal" entries into the country, and begin the process of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants.
You may be wondering what the Laken Riley Act is and how it could affect you.
The bill is being led by Republicans with support from Democrats currently running for re-election in red states.
Laken Riley, for whom the law is named, was a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia. She was killed on February 22, 2024, after being hit in the head several times with a rock and being suffocated by José Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant in the United States.
Ibarra crossed the border into Texas in 2022, but in 2024 was convicted of 10 charges, including murder, kidnapping with bodily injury and aggravated assault with intent to rape.
This bill would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain undocumented immigrants who have been charged with, arrested for, or admitted to committing burglary, theft, or shoplifting.
The bill also allows states to sue the federal government over decisions or alleged failures related to the enforcement of immigration laws.
It would also allow states to sue the State Department for issuing visas to immigrants from a country that unreasonably denies or delays accepting immigrants from that country; and it would create limitations on parole for immigrants, requiring that it be granted only on a case-by-case basis.
According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a member of the American Immigration Council“Giving states veto power over thousands of decisions made every day by federal law enforcement officials and leaders will complicate immigration issues in every community and threaten to trigger international incidents that could harm American interests around the world.”
This same organization has noted that if this bill is passed, it will require mandatory detention of certain “non-citizens,” including any undocumented person or DACA recipient, arrested for robbery, theft, larceny, or shoplifting-related offenses, even if they are never charged with a crime.
It would also give state attorneys general, including notoriously anti-immigrant states like Texas and Louisiana, the power to dictate immigration policy at the federal level and on the international stage.
For Sarah Mehta, senior border policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): “This is an extreme, reactive bill that would authorize the largest expansion of mandatory detention we’ve seen in decades, encompassing children, DREAMers, parents of U.S. citizen children, and other long-standing members of their communities who even ICE thinks should not be detained.”
The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) has strongly opposed the Laken Riley Act, saying it raises serious due process concerns by requiring mandatory detention in cases where people have been accused of “theft” and other minor crimes.
Other concerns, he said, include the guaranteed right to sue states that disagree with federal immigration policy (including the threat of excluding visas from entire countries).
Instead, AILA urges members of Congress to “implement smart solutions for an effective and fair immigration system, such as funding federal immigration agencies at sufficient levels and ensuring that the entire immigration system can serve the needs of American families, businesses, and the nation as a whole.”
California has more immigrants than any other state.
According to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC)California is home to 10.6 million immigrants, 22 percent of the nation's foreign-born population.
In 2023, the most recent year with data, 27 percent of California’s population was foreign-born, the highest share of any state and more than double the share in the rest of the country (12 percent). Nearly half (45 percent) of California’s children have at least one immigrant parent. While one-third (34 percent) of working-age adults (ages 25-54) were foreign-born, half (52 percent) of all foreign-born Californians are in this age group.
The Pew Research Center estimates that 1.8 million immigrants in California were undocumented in 2022, up from 2.8 million in 2007; while the population of unauthorized or undocumented immigrants in the United States rose to 11 million in 2022.
PPIC notes that immigrants are concentrated in the state's large coastal counties. In 2023, foreign-born residents accounted for at least one-third of the population in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, San Francisco and Los Angeles counties.
You may be interested in: Mexican government presents “Mexico embraces you” program for immigrants who are deported or want to return to their homeland
