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“Update & Urgent Call to Action: NO to Laken Riley Act

Dear DWN community,

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Act and the Senate is moving through a series of procedural votes towards passage of the bill, which exploits an awful tragedy to drastically expand mandatory detention and facilitate mass deportations by further weaponizing the criminal punishment system. It will lead to many more people being detained without access to bond and will have a disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities. If passed, the bill would also give power to anti-immigrant state attorneys general to sue the federal government to target, detain and deport specific people, overturn humanitarian parole decisions, and stop issuing visas to people from certain countries. 

The bill passed the House with the support of 48 Democrats and thus far it has passed procedural steps with the support of Senate Democrats, but there is still time before a final vote! Act now before the next vote on Wednesday!

For more information, check out this resource from the National Immigration Law Center about the top 5 things to know about what's in the bill. 

Please join DWN in demanding that Congress reject this bill TODAY. Send your Members of Congress a NO recommendation by  using the template email below.

We need all Members of Congress to hear from us, but especially the following:

• Arizona: Senador Rubén Gallego y Senador Mark Kelly

• Georgia: Senador Jon Ossoff, Senador Raphael Warnock 

• Illinois: Senador Dick Durbin

• Maine: Senador Angus King 

• Michigan: Senador Gary Peters y Senadora Elissa Slotkin

• Nevada: Senadora Catherine Cortez-Masto y Senadora Jacky Rosen

• New Hampshire: Senadora Maggie Hassan y Senadora Jeanne Shaheen 

• New York: Senador Chuck Schumer, Representante Hakeem Jeffries

• Pennsylvania: Senador John Fetterman

Find the target senator's staff emails list here.

TEMPLATE EMAIL:

Dear xx,

I urge Members of Congress to vote NO on the Laken Riley Act. This bill cynically manipulates a personal tragedy to criminalize and demonize immigrant communities. It would subject immigrants to prolonged, indefinite detention without bond based on mere allegations of petty offenses and gives individual states standing to override the executive branch's federal immigration policy. The bill is nothing short of a blank check for discriminatory and anti-immigrant state attorney generals to unleash chaos on the immigration system.

What the bill says: 

This bill requires the mandatory immigration arrest and detention – without access to bail – of any undocumented person convicted of or merely arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting related offenses. There is no statute of limitations and no mechanism for the individual to contest their immigration detention in order to resolve the underlying criminal charges against them (if charges are even brought).

The bill provides individual States with standing – regardless of whether they have any legitimate interest or stake – to bring litigation against the federal government with regard to any allegation that the federal government is improperly implementing the detention and removal provisions of federal law, visa related provisions, or its discretionary parole authority. 

Why the mandatory detention provisions of the bill would be harmful in practice: 

Laken Riley’s death is a tragedy. But exploiting that individual tragedy to demonize all immigrants is bad policy, and opens the door for harmful and dangerous rhetoric. Congress should not harm many people because one person was harmed.

The bill subjects individuals merely arrested for certain offenses, including petty offenses such as shoplifting, to mandatory detention even when no criminal charges are brought. It would encourage anti-immigrant law enforcement to profile people they believe to be undocumented and arrest them for trumped up charges, knowing such an arrest would lead to their indefinite incarceration. Such profiling disparately harms Black and Brown immigrant communities. 

Mandatory immigration detention – detention without access to a bond or bail hearing and with no mechanism for release prior to deportation – is a harmful retrogressive practice that should be ended, not expanded. There is no other area of American law where people can be locked up for prolonged periods without any individualized determination of the necessity of such detention. Mandatory detention premised merely on an arrest is unprecedented even within immigration laws.

In the criminal punishment system, there is a presumption favoring pretrial release and individuals detained for criminal proceedings are entitled to individualized bond hearings, regardless of the severity of the charges against them. Mandatory detention takes away this discretion from judges, forcing them to deprive everyone of their liberty, regardless of the severity of their conduct. It also undermines finality in criminal proceedings: unlike their citizen counterparts, noncitizens subject to mandatory detention are precluded from appearing at their criminal hearings to resolve their charges. Jailing and deporting noncitizens preemptively based on charges also undermines victims' access to justice, as federal immigration authorities effectively short-circuit criminal proceedings that would resolve charges and address any culpability.

Why the standing provisions of the bill would be harmful in practice: 

The doctrine of “standing” is critical to maintaining the proper balance of power in our democracy. Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires that a case or controversy exist for the federal courts to intervene, and the courts have long held that an entity or person must face possible, meaningful harm to be able to make out such a case or controversy. This bill attempts to simply throw this doctrine in the trash and have Congress decide a question squarely within the judicial branch’s arena. 

This provision would open the floodgates to state lawsuits against the federal government on the basis of any discretionary decision to release individuals. In recent years, the attorneys general of Texas and Louisiana have repeatedly asked federal courts to find they have “standing” to challenge federal immigration laws on the basis of openly discriminatory claims that their states are being harmed by public expenditures such as education, health care, and criminal legal programs, only when those funds are being spent on immigrants. This bill would essentially rubber stamp these claims, giving state governments legal authority to challenge any immigration policy with which they disagree, regardless of the xenophobic or discriminatory nature of that disagreement. 

This provision would also sow chaos, preventing the establishment of coherent federal policy and forcing the Department of Homeland Security to bend to the will of whichever litigious states make it to court first. It would undermine the rule of law and would make immigration enforcement even more expensive and cumbersome.

We urge Members of Congress not to succumb to a political ploy that manipulates a tragic act to demonize and criminalize an entire group of people. Anti-immigrant Members of Congress have long sought to dehumanize and stigmatize immigrants by conflating immigration with decreased public safety.  Evidence shows that immigrants make our communities stronger by invigorating local economies and fortifying urban development and cultural growth. As the mayor of Athens-Clarke County recently said, the conversation about Laken Riley’s death should be focused on mourning the tragic loss endured by her family and loved ones because of the acts of one person, not an entire group. 

We recommend a NO vote on the Laken Riley Act. Thank you and please reach out with any questions.”