On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed the Laken Riley Act.
The law is named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed while out running last year in Georgia. A Venezuelan national with temporary status was found guilty of her murder in November. He had previously been accused of shoplifting at a Walmart.
Riley’s murder amplified calls for stronger deportation measures and critics say it fueled anti-immigrant rhetoric.
“The Laken Riley Act takes this basic feature of the US legal system, that and anyone who is accused of crime is innocent until proven guilty, and really flips that on its head,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, Ohio State University law professor and author of “Welcome the Wretched - In Defense of the Criminal Alien.”
The legislation mandates that those without legal status who are accused of theft and violent crimes be detained by federal immigration agents.
García Hernández said under this law, the criminal legal process will abruptly end.
“ICE has never taken upon itself to ensure that it brings criminal defendants or detained in its prison system to state courthouses to ensure that prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges can move forward with a criminal prosecution,” he said.
In addition, he said it creates an entire class of people in which ICE can deny protections granted under the constitution.
“Congress here is giving ICE the power to say, ‘No, no, no, we don't care about the legal process when it comes to these migrants,’” García Hernández said. “We would rather that ICE detain them and deport them and be damned with the criminal legal process that everyone else is entitled to.”
He said this is concerning not just because it strips those without legal immigration status of due process, but for “all those of us who are invested in ensuring that the government punishes only those people who have had the opportunity to face their accusers in open court and hear the evidence against them and contest that evidence.”
The Laken Riley Act passed with bipartisan support.
A major rallying cry for the bill was that it would keep the public safe. But studies find that undocumented immigrants commit crime at a much lower rate than native-born Americans.
One of the reasons some Democrats say they oppose the law is that it’s unfunded. A memo obtained by the Associated Press from Democrats on the Appropriations Committee estimates the bill would cost $83 billion dollars over the next three years.
Among the Illinois House delegation, all Republicans and two Democrats - Representatives Nikki Budzinski and Eric Sorensen – voted for the bill. Illinois senators Democrats Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin both ultimately voted against the bill, but did help move the legislation forward in an earlier key vote.
García Hernández said in addition to this legislation, he’s looking at how Trump’s flurry of executive orders on immigration gets implemented when new money is not attached to policy.
“Private prison companies aren't holding people for ICE as a charity activity,” he said. “They're doing it because they make money, and that money has to come from Congress.”
García Hernández said when President Trump makes claim to executing mass deportation, it’s important to take a broader perspective and see how much immigration policy has actually shifted over a longer period of time.
So, the news headlines of a U.S. military plane carrying deported passengers to Colombia, he said, may just be for show.
“This is just an instance of Trump wanting to prove that he can do whatever he wants and send people on whatever airplane he wants,” he said, “when in reality, the numbers aren't all that different from what they were under the Biden administration or the Obama administration.”
There were hundreds of flights carrying deportees to Colombia during the Biden administration. Under President Obama, more deportations were executed than any other U.S. president.
And as far as how the law affects the Land of Lincoln, he said Congress does not have the power to force local authorities to cooperate with deportation operations.
“Congress can choose to entice, cajole, pressure, but not coerce, and that's an important line that is firmly embedded in the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution,” he said.
Under the Illinois Trust Act, local law enforcement is barred from cooperating with immigration agents, unless presented with a federal criminal warrant.
