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DEMOCRATS ARE ABOUT TO SURRENDER TO TRUMP IN A HUGELY DAMAGING WAY ON
LAKEN RILEY IMMIGRATION DEPORTATION BILL  
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Greg Sargent
January 9, 2025
The New Republic
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_ By all indications, at least nine Senate Democrats will vote to
advance the Laken Riley Act, a sweeping measure that mandates the
detention of undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent
crimes, all but ensuring that it will move forward. _

Economic Times screenshot,

 

By all indications, at least nine Senate Democrats will vote to
advance
[[link removed]] the
Laken Riley Act, a sweeping measure that mandates the detention of
undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes, all but
ensuring that it will move forward. This is a classic GOP “message
bill”: It forces Democrats to either oppose the package, creating
instant ad fodder against them, or swallow the whole thing, even
though it contains some awful policies that most Democrats would
surely oppose in isolation.

Unfortunately, some Senate Democrats are making this mess worse than
it has to be—and in so doing, are flirting with an early surrender
to Donald Trump. It suggests that some Democrats, spooked by Trump’s
comeback, have already decided there’s no percentage in even
attempting to challenge anything carrying the aura of “toughness”
on immigration. That doesn’t bode well for their capacity to resist
the terrible crackdown that’s coming, but fortunately, it’s not
too late to find a better path.

Of particular note here: Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and
Ruben Gallego of Arizona. When they endorsed
[[link removed]] the
bill this week, it appeared inevitable that more Democratic senators
would follow, given that each seems to know how to politically survive
in challenging swing states. And indeed, the nine that have now backed
the bill ensure that it will get 60 votes needed to break cloture and
move forward.

But the way in which Fetterman and Gallego handled this rankled some
Democratic senators and aides. They appeared to unequivocally endorse
the bill with a haste that is gratuitous and that could make it harder
politically to amend the bill later, aides told me. And both made
misleading claims about the issue that could later help Trump.

Senator Alex Padilla of California has been telling colleagues that
rushing to endorse the bill in full is not necessary and potentially
harmful. “Democrats should use the leverage we have in the Senate to
demand practical and necessary improvements,” Padilla told me in a
statement.

The Laken Riley Act, which has passed the House with 48 Democrats
backing it, would require
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Department of Homeland Security to detain undocumented migrants
accused of minor crimes like burglary, theft, larceny, and
shoplifting, putting them on track to deportation. This is dubious
policy: DHS already has the authority to detain such undocumented
immigrants; the bill would merely require this. That could give
DHS _less_ flexibility to make enforcement decisions in these cases,
forcing it to detain people accused of the most minor transgressions
even if DHS determines that enforcement resources might be better used
elsewhere.

What happened to Laken Riley—a nursing student murdered by
undocumented migrant Jose Ibarra after he’d previously committed
minor crimes—was a horror, and Ibarra has rightly received
[[link removed].] a
life sentence for it. But as American Immigration Council senior
fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick points out
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it’s extraordinarily rare for low-level offenders to go on to commit
murder; now Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be required to
detain e_very_ such offender, a potentially huge waste of resources
that could be used to pursue more serious criminals. His case should
not be the basis for such massive policy changes.

Regardless, another part of the bill is potentially worse than its
detention mandate. It grants state attorneys general standing to bring
lawsuits against certain specific federal immigration policies if they
claim their states are damaged by those policies, and to seek
“injunctive relief” against them.

This could theoretically empower state attorneys general to go to a
friendly judge and get injunctions blocking policies involving DHS
grants of some types of protections allowing migrants to legally
remain in the United States, Reichlin-Melnick notes
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Worse, he says, the bill also authorizes lawsuits that could result in
the suspension of visas granted to whole countries in cases where a
given country is not agreeing to accept deported migrants.

“Imagine Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton bringing a lawsuit
seeking to end all H1-B visas from India and China because those
countries refuse to accept deportations of those nationals living in
Texas,” Reichlin-Melnick told me. “This could allow any state A.G.
to threaten an international incident.” Or, he said, a Paxton
lawsuit might seek “to block a Democratic president’s grant of
parole to migrants fleeing the war in Ukraine.” These provisions
raise serious constitutional issues and questions about state
encroachment on federal immigration enforcement.

Fetterman and Gallego, and several other Democratic senators, endorsed
this entire bill. But as Democratic aides point out, they had the
option of merely supporting _moving to debate_ on the bill while
clarifying that it harbors serious problems. Other Democrats who now
support advancing the bill took that tack
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The rush to endorse the whole thing undercuts the case for amending it
later. In essence, Republicans laid a trap for Democrats, and some
stepped into it. “We’re frustrated that certain Senate Democrats
took the bait,” a senior Senate Democratic aide told me. “As a
result, we could end up making some really bad immigration policy.”

The aide added that this is undercutting a potential “coordinated
effort” by Senate Democrats to amend provisions empowering MAGA
attorneys general. That effort could have been mounted while also
allowing Democrats to support the mandatory detention provision later.

To be clear, the mandatory detention piece is also problematic. As
Padilla points out: “It will cause significant problems, forcing ICE
agents to prioritize detaining noncitizens for low-level, nonviolent
offenses like shoplifting and taking away from the focus on violent
criminals who endanger our communities.”

But even if some Democrats want to support that provision, they can at
a minimum band together to demand amendments to the parts that empower
attorneys general from MAGA-land.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will announce Thursday that
enough Democrats will support the bill to move it forward, an aide
says. Theoretically, Democrats can still mount resistance by demanding
amendments or even by filibustering the bill at the end of debate if
Republicans don’t allow changes. Will Democrats do any of this?
Unfortunately, it’s more likely that enough want to support the
current bill to enable final passage.

All this should prompt us to revisit pundit claims
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victory shows Democrats must move to the center on immigration and
stand more forcefully for enforcement. While that analysis contains
kernels of truth, and a rethink is necessary, the problem with that
prescription is in the details: What does doing this really entail?

Right now, we’re seeing the dangers of _overreaction_ in that
direction. This is what happens when Democrats decide in advance that
arguments on this issue can’t be won.

Winning these arguments _is_ hard. Riley’s story is horrific. In
this environment, it _is_ difficult to argue that migrants who have
committed crimes (minor, but still) don’t merit this type of
mandatory federal detention. But it can be done: Democratic
Representatives Sean Casten
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Pingree
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made powerful cases that the bill could produce serious injustices
toward the most minor offenders and deprive them of due process, along
with other intended consequences. Do pundits urging a centrist stance
believe Democrats should support this bill in its current form?

Gallego has declared
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would exempt Dreamers brought here illegally as children, which
is not true [[link removed]].
He has asserted
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necessary because the Biden administration took “no action” on the
border after the Covid-related Title 42 asylum ban lifted, which
is simply false [[link removed]]. Fetterman
has suggested
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the bill is “giving authorities the tools” to prevent killings
like Riley’s. But that’s misleading, obscuring the fact that
they _already_ have those “tools.” And Fetterman has trafficked
in the same distortions
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immigration data that Trump does
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portray a system more out of control than it is.

Fetterman and Gallego are both seen by pundits as having the magic key
to winning working-class voters. So is such misleading public conduct
OK in their eyes as a means for Democrats to reconnect with the
working class?

Every Democrat knows that what Republicans are really doing with this
bill is elevating the notion that migrants are criminals, to justify
the crackdown to come. Do these pundits believe countering that kind
of agitprop is so insurmountable that it’s OK to mislead people on
the issue and evade the responsibility to stand up for good lawmaking
at critical moments?

If all of that is acceptable, then we’re in a bad place. The debate
over this bill bodes very badly for what’s to come—and it will
surely get much worse than this.

_[GREG SARGENT is a staff writer at The New Republic and the host of
the podcast The Daily Blast
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seasoned political commentator with over two decades of experience, he
was a prominent columnist and blogger at The Washington Post from
2010 to 2023 and has worked at Talking Points Memo, New
York magazine, and the New York Observer. Greg is also the author
of the critically acclaimed book
[[link removed]] An
Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation and
Thunderdome Politics.  [link removed]  
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* Laken Riley
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* Immigration
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* Deportation
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* deportations
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* Democrats
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* Congress
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* Senate
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* House
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* Senate Dems
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* Donald Trump
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* John Fetterman
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* Ruben Gallego
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* Jon Ossoff
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