House passes migrant detention bill, slams Biden’s border policies
The House of Representatives on Thursday passed legislation that would require migrants who enter the country without authorization and are accused of theft to be taken into federal custody, after Republicans introduced a bill attacking President Biden and Democrats as dangerously lax in the field of border enforcement.
The measure is named after Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia who was murdered in February. Authorities have charged a Venezuelan migrant who entered the United States illegally and was subsequently released on parole in the case.
The bill has little chance of making headway in the Democratic-led Senate, but Republicans used it as a way to draw attention to Democrats in the border debate and sow the kind of fear about immigrants that former president Donald J. Trump has had. made a staple of his politics.
Their efforts to harass Democrats on the issue appeared to be successful, as 37 members of Biden’s party supported the legislation, which broadly denounced the administration’s “open borders” policy. The bill, which passed by a vote of 251-170, also named “Border Czar” Vice President Kamala Harris” and Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, who was impeached by the House of Representatives last month. And it called on Mr. Biden to “publicly denounce his administration’s immigration policies that resulted in the murder of Laken Riley.”
Many Democrats condemned the bill, calling it a cowardly political maneuver that exploited a tragedy and did nothing to address the situation at the border. They argued that the legislation would subject more people to mandatory detention at a time when Republicans refuse to give the Department of Homeland Security the resources it needs to implement its policies. They also noted that the legislation could put innocent people at risk of unlawful detention.
“Let’s think about that,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York. “Someone who is arrested but never even charged will now be subject to mandatory immigration detention.” He said people are often arrested for crimes they did not commit. Ms Riley’s case was heartbreaking, he said, but “tough cases make for bad law.”
Immigration officials currently have broad discretion in whether to detain undocumented immigrants, but are required to do so in cases of drug offenses, serious crimes and membership of a terrorist organization. Yet space issues mean officials can only detain those who pose the greatest threat to public safety and national security.
On Thursday, hours before Biden’s State of the Union address, Republicans directly blamed him for Ms. Riley’s death. Rep. Tom McClintock of California said her murder was “predestined the day this administration took office.”
Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey simply stated, “Laken Riley is dead because of Joe Biden’s policies.”
Ms. Riley went for an afternoon run near the University of Georgia campus last month and never returned. Her body was later found on a forest trail, with visible injuries from what authorities later called “blunt trauma.”
The man accused of the killing is a migrant from Venezuela, arrested by border police for illegally entering the country in 2022 and released with temporary permission to stay in the country.
In New York City, Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was subsequently arrested on charges of driving a scooter without a license and with a child not wearing a helmet. In Georgia he was arrested in connection with a shoplifting case. But when officials ran his name through their databases, there was no indication he would be detained.
Then came Mrs. Riley’s murder.
The House bill would call on Mr. Biden to end the practice that critics sometimes call “catch and release,” in which migrants caught crossing the border without authorization are released on parole to to remain in the country until their immigration claims can be decided. It also calls on him to strengthen immigration enforcement, “detain and remove criminal aliens,” reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy that requires migrants to remain in Mexico while their immigration claims have been processed, putting an end to what it called Trump policies. Biden’s ‘parole abuse’.
The measure would also allow states to sue the federal government for failing to enforce border security laws, which Democrats say are unconstitutional.
“DHS can’t hold everyone, so the executive branch, not the states, must make choices,” said Representative Glenn F. Ivey, Democrat of Maryland. “This bill would not give DHS the resources to change that. We all know we need more border agents and more judges to reduce the backlog of immigration cases. This bill is not a serious attempt to address real border security needs.”
Mr. Biden has requested nearly $14 billion to hire more Border Patrol agents and judges so asylum decisions can be made more quickly. Republicans rejected that request.
The House-passed legislation came just weeks after Senate Republicans rejected the tough border security restrictions they themselves had demanded, after Mr. Trump stoked opposition to the bipartisan compromise and made clear he would ease the unrest at the borders as a political advantage in the presidential race.
“If Republicans had taken it seriously, they would not have rejected the Senate bill,” Nadler said. “That bill was going to pass until President Trump decided he would rather have a problem for the campaign than solve the problem.”
The Laken Riley Act is part of a long-standing Republican campaign to stoke fears that lax immigration policies will lead to a surge of immigrants and people of color in otherwise safe communities, fueling crime.
Mr. Trump and other Republicans have tried to spin the issue for political advantage. Speaking about Ms. Riley’s murder, Mr. Trump recently referred to “Biden migrant crime” and said prisons in other countries are “emptying” in the United States.
On Thursday, Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana and majority leader, said Ms. Riley’s killing was part of a trend.
“It’s happening over and over again in communities across America since Joe Biden opened our southern border,” he said.
The statistics do not support these claims. For years, studies have found that undocumented immigrants have much lower crime rates than citizens born in the United States and legal immigrants when it comes to a variety of crimes, including violent crimes, drug crimes, and property crimes.
Mr. Trump and Republicans have chosen to emphasize the exceptions. During his presidency, Mr. Trump has often emphasized what he called “angel families,” relatives of people killed by undocumented immigrants, to advocate his strictest border policies. Speaker Mike Johnson planned to host angel families in his box in the House chamber for Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.
Capitalizing on racially charged crime politics is hardly a new tactic. Long before Trump entered the political scene and warned about criminals entering the country from Mexico, former President George Bush used the case of Willie Horton, a black man who committed violent crimes while briefly granted leave from prison, to fuel a campaign to get going. in 1988 against his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said the bill passed Thursday would have done nothing to prevent Ms. Riley’s death.
“This is a sickening new low for the Republican majority in the House of Representatives,” she said.