The Laken Riley Act is Unjust – and a Trojan Horse
Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Act (LRA), in a 264-159 vote. This legislation – named after a student killed by an undocumented immigrant – is often sold by proponents as a tool for combatting murderers and sex offenders. In reality, it focuses on detaining undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes, including minor ones. It also includes a Trojan horse provision making it easier for states to challenge a variety of programs that make legal migration easier. These policies are unjust, and likely to impede genuine crime-fighting efforts more than they help them.
The main provision of the Laken Riley Act requires mandatory federal detention of any undocumented immigrant who “is charged with, is arrested for, is convicted of, admits having committed, or admits committing acts which constitute the essential elements of any burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting offense.” Notice that the provision is triggered by a mere arrest or charge, and does not require any proof of guilt beyond that. Moreover, even the most minor forms of theft, burglary, or shoplifting qualify. If a migrant is arrested on suspicion of stealing a dime or a paperclip from a store, that’s enough to trigger mandatory detention. Ditto if he or she is charged with even the most minor theft-related offense.
Pretrial detention is already overused, even when it comes to US citizens. Forcibly detaining people who have never been tried or convicted of any crime is presumptively unjust, and should only be resorted to when it is the only way to prevent some grave threat to public safety, as in the case of suspected serial killers or terrorists. The whole point of requiring trial and conviction before imprisoning people is to ensure that only those actually guilty of crimes are subject to such severe punishment. Making pretrial detention mandatory for a large population for arrests and charges for even the most minor theft-related crimes only makes the injustice worse.
Moreover, detention is expensive. Federal immigration detention currently costs an estimate $165 per day per detainee, and that doesn’t count the costs of taking people out of the workforce. Those funds can be put to better crime-fighting use by, for example, putting more police on the streets, a strategy with demonstrated crime-reducing effects. Spending them on detention of migrants arrested or charged with even minor theft-related crimes is a waste. As my Cato Institute colleague and immigration policy expert David Bier notes, the first Trump administration’s efforts to detain and deport nonviolent asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants predictably diverted resources from combating serious crime. If enacted, the Laken Riley Act will likely have a similar effect.
Moreover, the Laken Riley Act creates perverse incentives for state and local police and prosecutors. Normally, they are reluctant to arrest and charge people when there is little change of securing a conviction. But under the LRA, a bogus arrest or indictment of an undocumented immigrant on a theft-related offense leads to mandatory detention paid for by the feds – not the sta
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