Politics Politics | House Passes Migrant Detention Bill, Denouncing Biden Border Policies Share full article Log

Migrant Detention Bill, Denouncing Biden Border Policies Share full article Log in+

House Passes Migrant Detention Bill,

Denouncing Biden Border Policies
Thirty-seven Democrats joined Republicans in support of the
legislation, which has little chance of enactment but offered the
G.O.P. a chance to attack President Biden and Democrats on
immigration.

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Many Democrats condemned the bill passed Thursday, calling it a craven political maneuver that exploited
a tragedy while doing nothing to address the situation at the border. Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Annie Karni
Reporting from Capitol Hill

March 7, 2024, 3:58 p.m. ET

The House passed legislation on Thursday that would mandate

that migrants who enter the country without authorization and are
accused of theft be taken into federal custody, as Republicans
pushed a messaging bill to attack President Biden and Democrats
as dangerously lax on border enforcement.

The measure was named for Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing

student from Georgia who was killed in February. The authorities
have charged a Venezuelan migrant who crossed into the United
States illegally and was then released on parole in the case.

The bill has little chance of moving forward in the Democratic-led

Senate, but Republicans used it as a way to put Democrats on the
spot in the debate over the border and sow the kind of fear about
immigrants that former President Donald J. Trump has made a
staple of his politics.

Their efforts to jam Democrats on the issue appeared to have

succeeded, as 37 members of Mr. Biden’s party backed the
legislation, which broadly denounced the “open borders” policies of
the administration. The bill, which passed 251 to 170, also singled
out “‘Border Czar’ Vice President Kamala Harris” and Alejandro N.
Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, whom the House
impeached 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 craven political

maneuver that exploited a tragedy while doing 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 are refusing to give the Homeland Security
Department the resources it needs to carry out its policies. They
also noted that the legislation could put innocent people at risk of
unlawful detention.

The bill singled out Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, whom the House impeached
last month. Kenny Holston/The New York Times

“Let’s think about that,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler,

Democrat of New York. “Someone who is arrested but who is never
even charged is now going to be subject to mandatory immigration
detention.” He said that people are often arrested for crimes they
did not commit. The case of Ms. Riley, he said, was heartbreaking,
but “hard cases make bad law.”

Immigration officials currently have broad discretion about

whether to detain undocumented immigrants but are required to
do in the case of drug crimes, aggravated felonies and membership
in a terrorist organization. Even so, space issues mean officials can
detain only those who pose the greatest threats to public safety and
national security.

On the House floor on Thursday, hours before Mr. Biden’s State of

the Union address, Republicans blamed him directly for Ms. Riley’s
death. Representative Tom McClintock of California said her killing
was “foreordained the day this administration took office.”

Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey stated simply, “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 wooded trail, with visible injuries from what the authorities
later called “blunt force trauma.”

The man charged with her killing is a migrant from Venezuela,

arrested by Border Patrol for crossing illegally into the country in
2022 and released with temporary permission to stay in the
country.

In New York City, Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, was then arrested on
charges of driving a scooter without a license and with a child who
was 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 should be
detained.

Then came the killing of Ms. Riley.

The House bill would call on Mr. Biden to end the practice critics
sometimes call “catch and release,” in which migrants caught
crossing the border without authorization are given parole to
remain in the country until their immigration claims can be
adjudicated. It also calls on him to increase immigration
enforcement, detain and remove “criminal aliens,” reinstate the
Trump-era “remain in Mexico” policy that requires migrants to
stay in Mexico while their immigration claims were processed, and
ending what it called Mr. Biden’s “abuse of parole authority.”

The bill was named after Laken Riley, a 22-year-old University of Georgia student who was killed in
February. Joshua L. Jones/Athens Banner-Herald, via Associated Press

The measure also would allow states to sue the federal government
for failing to enforce border security laws, which Democrats said
was unconstitutional.

“D.H.S. cannot detain everyone, so the executive branch, not the

states, have to make choices,” said Representative Glenn F. Ivey,
Democrat of Maryland. “This bill would not give D.H.S. the
resources to change that. We all know we need more border agents
and more judges to eliminate the backlog of immigration cases.
This bill is not a serious attempt to address the actual border
security needs.”

Mr. Biden has requested almost $14 billion to hire more Border
Patrol agents and judges so asylum decisions can be made more
quickly. Republicans have rejected that request.

The legislation passed by the House came just weeks after Senate
Republicans rejected tough border security restrictions they
themselves had demanded, after Mr. Trump stoked opposition to
the bipartisan compromise and made it clear that he considers
border turmoil a political advantage in the presidential race.

“If Republicans were serious, they wouldn’t have tanked the

Senate bill,” Mr. Nadler said. “That bill was going to be agreed to,
until President Trump decided that he’d rather have an issue for
the campaign than solve the problem.”

The Laken Riley Act is part of a longstanding Republican

campaign to stoke fear that lax immigration policies will lead to a
surge of immigrants and people of color into otherwise safe
communities, fueling crime.

Mr. Trump and other Republicans have sought to distort and wring
political advantage from the issue. Speaking about Ms. Riley’s
killing, Mr. Trump recently referred to “Biden migrant crime” and
said that jails in other countries were “emptying out” into the
United States.

On Thursday, Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of

Louisiana and the majority leader, said that Ms. Riley’s killing was
part of a trend.

“It’s happening over and over again in communities all across

America, ever since Joe Biden opened our southern border,” he
said.

The statistics do not back up those claims. For years, studies have
found that undocumented immigrants have much lower crime
rates than citizens born in the United States and legal immigrants
across a variety of offenses, including violent crimes, drug crimes
and property crimes.

Former President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans have sought to wring political advantage from
the issue of immigration and the border. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Mr. Trump and Republicans have chosen to highlight the

exceptions. During his presidency, Mr. Trump often elevated what
he called “angel families,” relatives of people killed by
undocumented immigrants, in making the case for his most
stringent border policies. Speaker Mike Johnson was planning on
Thursday to host angel families in his box in the House chamber
for Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address.

Playing on the racially charged politics of crime is hardly a new

tactic. Long before Mr. Trump burst onto the political stage
warning of criminals coming into the country from Mexico, former
President George Bush used the case of Willie Horton a Black man ,

who committed violent crimes when he was briefly furloughed

from prison, to mount a campaign in 1988 against his Democratic
opponent, Michael Dukakis.

Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said

the bill that passed Thursday would have done nothing to prevent
Ms. Riley’s death.

“This is a nauseating new low for the House Republican majority,”

she said.

Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and
profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership. More about Annie Karni

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A Divided Congress: Latest News and Analysis

Migrant Detention Bill: The House passed legislation that would mandate that
migrants who enter the country without authorization and are accused of theft be
taken into federal custody . The bill has little chance in the Senate.
Alejandro M ayorkas Impeachment: After rushing to impeach the homeland
security secretary, House Republicans are taking their time delivering the charges
to the Senate, where they are doomed. Our congressional reporter looks at the
G.O.P.’s dilemma .

Katie Porter: The California representative harnessed social media and her
committee perch to build a following. But after a Senate run that ended for her on
Super Tuesday, she has nowhere to go this election season .

Bipartisan Spending Bill: The House passed a $460 billion spending bill to fund
about half the federal government through the fall, moving to avert a partial
shutdown and offering the first glimmer of resolution to the spending fights that
have consumed Congress for months.
G.O.P. Leadership Shake-Up: Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, one of the
potential top contenders to succeed Senator Mitch McConnell as Senate
Republican leader, has decided instead to seek the No. 2 position .

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