In a case that appears to have been an attempted rape turned homicide, Riley’s death should have sparked a conversation around gendered violence and femicide, seeing as the United States has one of the highest rates of femicide in the world among high-income countries. However, these horrific crimes are most often committed by intimate partners, with white men representing the largest class of perpetrators, so broad generalizations might hit a little close to home for those in power. No, according to the right, the most pressing issue relating to the case is “Joe Biden’s open border” and “weak detention policies” (despite Biden deporting record numbers of immigrants).
Jose Ibarra had been arrested for entering the country illegally and subsequently released while waiting for a removal hearing. During that time, he was arrested in New York for riding a scooter with a child not wearing a helmet and in Georgia for shoplifting, but local police did not hold him for long enough for ICE to determine whether to detain him. The Laken Riley Act does require federal authorities to detain arrested immigrants if they are not being held by local police, but it has no requirements for the police themselves, so there is nothing in this proposed law that would have compelled them to detain Ibarro.
While this draconian enforcement requirement would cause incredible harm to asylum seekers and other immigrants just trying to live their lives—while benefiting no one other than private prison companies—this provision would not even be the most structurally damaging component of the bill. The law also empowers state attorneys general to take the federal government to court almost at will whenever they think the executive is not being strict enough in its enforcement. State AGs would have standing to sue over both individual detention decisions and larger policies like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program and others that set immigration enforcement priorities. It also gives AGs the option to sue to force visa bans on specific countries, such as China, that do not accept back all deportees from their countries.
Making the right-wing power grab even more explicit is the fact that the law is a one-way ratchet. Challenges are only allowed when AGs want the federal government to restrict immigration further, but there are no options for an AG making a case that hardline immigration enforcement causes the state financial harm. So essentially, whoever is running the executive, it will be Republican politicians and judges setting immigration policy.
While Democrats play footsie with demagogues, Republicans have grabbed the reins of power everywhere they can. When they lose statewide races but retain their gerrymandered legislatures, they strip power from statewide officeholders in favor of the legislature. When democratically elected local governments provide too much support to their residents, Republicans use the power of the state government to take them to court. When ballot initiatives break popular policies through conservative strangleholds on red state legislatures, Republicans limit direct democracy. And of course, once they maneuvered their way into a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, they fell in love with judicial supremacy.
Now they are coming for immigration policy so they can impose even more of their dystopian vision on the country. The left needs to mobilize to protect what remnants of influence and access to power that they have, starting by voting down the Laken Riley Act. The right is ready for this fight, but it’s not too late for the Democrats to wake up.
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