Congress is poised to pass a bad immigration bill – the Laken Riley Act – and the four members of New Hampshire’s all-Democratic federal delegation are either already on board or have one foot in the boat. A week ago, when I wrote about how important it was for Democrats to resist the pull of hollow victories, this is just the kind of bill I was thinking about.
Based on the name of the legislation, it might seem like a yes vote would be a no-brainer. The murder of Laken Riley isn’t just a tragedy; it is a nightmare made real. In February 2024, the Augusta University nursing student went out for a jog and was murdered in what the police in Georgia later called a “crime of opportunity.” The killer was a 26-year-old Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally, and had previously been arrested for shoplifting. He is now serving a life sentence.
The immigration bill that bears Riley’s name will make sure other migrants are punished for that crime, too.
As reported by States Newsroom’s Ariana Figueroa, the Laken Riley Act “would expand mandatory detention requirements for immigrants – including some with legal status – charged with petty crimes like shoplifting.” It’s important to note that she writes “charged” rather than “convicted.”
Immigration lawyers fear Laken Riley bill could have broad impact as Trump takes office
In that same story, Figueroa quotes María Teresa Kumar, the president and CEO of the civic engagement group Voto Latino, who highlights the bill’s principle flaws: “Such measures not only undermine due process but also disproportionately target migrants who are already fleeing violence and instability in search of safety.”
The bill is named what it is for a reason: Politically, it is very difficult to oppose legislation, even bad legislation, that derives its name from a tragedy. To vote against x piece of legislation, its supporters will say, is a slap in the face to the victim and/or the victim’s family. It’s a simplistic argument but carries political costs.
If we lived in a more thoughtful society, we could debate each bill on its merits alone but that is not the world we live in. In America, fear and insecurity are often the main drivers of policy.
Furthermore, anyone who opposes charged bills like this one typically faces the same mic-drop question: What if Laken Riley was your daughter (or sister, or mother)? As intended, the question is the most painful of exercises, but the right answer rests in the concept of justice: If it was my daughter, or sister, or mother, I would want the guilty punished and the innocent protected.
The Laken Riley Act sets out to accomplish the first but also creates new, and innocent, victims.
With the far right now in control of the federal government, the months and years ahead will offer Democrats a very limited menu of responses to a range of misguided, cruel, and classist legislation: They can choose either capitulation or standing up for what’s right, political cost be damned. There are a lot of labels that could be attached to support for this bill, but “fighting the good fight” is not one of them.
While New Hampshire’s two U.S. representatives, Chris Pappas in the 1st District and Maggie Goodlander in the 2nd, have already voted for the Laken Riley Act, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan have so far voiced support only for considering the bill. But each has made a point of saying they would like to find a bipartisan path forward.
“Making it easier to remove undocumented immigrants who commit crimes from our country is a basic first step that Congress can take, but we cannot stop here,” Hassan said, neglecting to acknowledge in her statement that as it stands the Laken Riley Act would sweep up many with legal status (including those who have been charged but not convicted with petty crimes).
In her statement, Shaheen said, “I voted in favor of considering this bill because I strongly support efforts to improve our immigration enforcement and protect public safety.”
Few would disagree that our entire immigration system is in dire need of improvement, but this bill sacrifices much more in justice, not to mention humanity, than it gains in public safety.
As I’ve followed this debate, I’ve thought quite a bit about Arline Geronimus. She’s a professor of public health at the University of Michigan, who in 2023 published a book called, “Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society.”
Broadly speaking, her book explores how systemic injustice – such as the kind expanded by the Laken Riley Act – undermines public health and life expectancy, especially for Black people, immigrants, and the poor.
“Weathering,” she writes, “is about hopeful, hardworking, responsible, skilled, and resilient people dying from the physical toll of constant stress on their bodies, paying with their health because they live in a rigged, degrading, and exploitative system.”
The supporters of the more punitive immigration measures – like mass deportations – will say, “Well, these ‘hopeful, hardworking, responsible, skilled, and resilient people’ are not the people we are targeting.” But, as much as anything, bills like the Laken Riley Act are about profiling – linking immigrants at large, especially from South America, Central America, and Mexico, to the murder of an American college student. That is how the innocent are weathered.
There are a lot of reform steps our nation needs to take on immigration. Guilty until proven innocent isn’t one of them.
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