Laken Riley Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by expressing my deepest condolences to Laken Riley's family. The pain of losing a child is something no parent should have to go through. The alleged perpetrator should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

By all accounts, Laken was a kind and gentle soul, beloved by everyone around her. May her memory be a blessing.

Unfortunately, instead of coming together to express our sorrow for Laken's tragic loss, the majority appears to be exploiting her death for yet another partisan political stunt.

Rather than approaching this tragic event in a thoughtful manner, Republicans appear to have just thrown together language from existing unrelated bills that target and scapegoat immigrants to score cheap political points in an election year, while doing nothing to address the situation at the border.

This approach is fundamentally unserious. As if to emphasize the point, the author of this legislation spent the weekend promoting anti- Semitic memes on Twitter.

At base, this bill is a rinse and repeat of the majority's unserious attempt to keep immigration in the news: pick a crime; paste it into a template bill with sweeping, unrealistic immigration consequences; and then require detention and deportation of certain immigrants merely accused of committing such a crime--no due process required--all so that you can demonize immigrants and sound tough without actually making this country safer.

The legislation before us today would subject to mandatory detention any undocumented immigrants merely arrested or charged with committing an act of theft, larceny, or shoplifting, along with those who are convicted or who admit to committing such acts.

Let's think about that. Someone who is arrested and who was never even charged with a crime is now going to be subject to mandatory immigration detention?

The case of Laken Riley is a tragedy, but as is often said, hard cases make bad law.

Under this bill, committing a misdemeanor shoplifting, or even committing no crime at all, can result in a DACA or TPS recipient, someone who may have been in this country for decades, being subject to mandatory detention.

Sadly, there are countless real-life examples of people getting arrested because of mistaken identity through erroneous witness identification, biographical similarities to perpetrators, and errors caused by faulty facial recognition technology.

In a markup we had in the Judiciary Committee last month, Mr. Massie discussed how mistaken identification can deprive someone of their constitutional rights. He noted very real concerns about racial disparities in the development of artificial intelligence and facial recognition tools. These tools have led to numerous erroneous arrests, mostly of people of color.

For example, just over a year ago, a Detroit woman was arrested for robbery and carjacking after she was improperly identified as the perpetrator by automatic facial recognition search. She was 8 months pregnant when she was arrested. After being held by the police for 11 hours, she was released on a $100,000 bond. It took a month and two hearings for the case against her to be dismissed.

Under this bill, however, if this woman had been on DACA or TPS status, ICE would have been required to detain her upon release, and her U.S. citizen son would have been born in immigration detention even though she had committed no crime.

Mandatory detention of innocent people is not a reasonable or sensible policy choice. This is not where we should be focusing our limited enforcement resources.

It is important to remember that this bill would subject more people to mandatory detention at a time when Republicans refuse to give the Department of Homeland Security the resources it needs to carry out its policies.

The Biden administration is currently detaining 39,000 people a day. That is 5,000 more people than Congress has even provided funding for it to detain.

Congress has never appropriated, and no administration has ever requested, sufficient resources to detain all noncitizens who fall under the ``mandatory detention'' categories. Even former President Trump never tried to detain all migrants subject to mandatory detention.

House Republicans know this, but instead of facing that reality and providing the resources necessary to address weaknesses in the immigration system, they would prefer to demagogue the issue, and they bring us measures like this.

If that wasn't bad enough, this bill also purports to give State attorneys general standing to sue in court for perceived violations of certain sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act, hoping to convince the judicial branch to impose draconian immigration policy preferences that MAGA Republicans have failed to get through the political branches of the Federal Government.

This bill simply declares that States have standing to sue so long as the State or its residents suffer almost any degree of harm, no matter how trivial, appearing only to exclude financial harms that are less than $100.

We should note that this provision is almost certainly unconstitutional. Just declaring that there is standing does not make it so.

Just last year, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of States' standing to sue the Federal Government over immigration enforcement matters, which this bill appears to be a half-baked attempt to circumvent. In an 8-1 decision, the Court held that Texas and Louisiana lacked Article III standing to bring suit against the Federal Government over its alleged violation of some of the very same immigration statutes that this bill would purport to grant standing to the States to sue over.

In rejecting the States' standing argument, the Court noted, among other things, that lawsuits alleging insufficient arrests or prosecution run against the executive branch's Article II authority to enforce the law, which includes the discretion to determine enforcement priorities in the face of lack of resources and shifting public safety and public welfare needs.

This bill also goes directly against the Supreme Court's settled precedent in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, which explicitly states that a statutory right to sue does not constitute an injury for purposes of standing.

Be that as it may, settled precedent, much like responsible governance, doesn't seem to matter much to the majority. Time and again, Republicans have refused to engage in bipartisan immigration reform. At the behest of Donald Trump, Republicans dismissed out of hand a bipartisan Senate border bill that Senate Minority Leader McConnell called the strongest border bill in 30 years.

In October, the Biden administration sent Congress a supplemental funding request, which included an additional $14 billion for border security. House Republicans refused to schedule a vote on this funding request, which would provide the Biden administration the resources it needs to secure the border and would provide additional support for communities receiving migrants.

Both these bills would have allowed the Biden administration to hire thousands more asylum officers and asylum and immigration judges, so asylum hearings happen in weeks, not years. This would help put an end to what my Republican colleagues refer to as catch and release.

That is the procedure in immigration law that has been used by every administration for decades. What they mean by that is you catch someone, but because of lack of resources, his court date is 3 years from then, so you have to release him pending the court date because he has a credible claim to asylum. However, with the appropriation that the Biden administration had requested, it could be done in weeks, not years, and we wouldn't have the problem of the so-called catch and release.

All they can point to is H.R. 2, which last week had a grand total of 32 ``yes'' votes in the Senate when it was brought up for a vote.

Instead of rushing yet another partisan stunt to the floor, the majority should work with Democrats to pass bipartisan solutions to address the situation at the border. That would be a far better way to truly honor the lives of those we have tragically lost.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker said that illegal aliens who committed crimes should be detained, and, indeed, they should. However, this bill says that illegal aliens who somebody thinks may have committed a crime should be detained mandatorily. That is un- American.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Laken Riley is dead because of Joe Biden's policies. There are no words that I can say that will bring her back to life. There are no words that will bring back State Trooper Christopher Gadd. There are no words that will bring back 16-year-old Lizbeth Medina. There are no words that will bring back all those who have been brutally beaten, murdered, and damaged by illegals who were let out on parole.

However, for God's sake, pass the Laken Riley Act.

Also, President Biden, stop paroling illegals over and over again. Stop killing our Americans. Stop hurting our Americans.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Scalise and the other Republicans are not serious about solving the problem we all talk about. Mr. Scalise says the solution is H.R. 2, a bill so serious it received 32 votes in the United States Senate, a body with 49 Republican Senators.

If the Republicans were sincere and serious about solving this problem, they would vote for the $14 billion that the President has requested to hire more Border Patrol people and more judges so that asylum decisions can be made in weeks and not years, and he wouldn't have the problem of catch and release.

If Republicans were serious, they wouldn't have tanked the Senate bill developed in negotiations with principally Senator Lankford, who is considered the second-most conservative Senator in the Senate, and that bill was going to be agreed to until President Trump decided-- former President Trump and hopefully never again President Trump-- decided that he would rather have an issue for the campaign than solve the problem, so he told the Republicans to tank the bill that they had just written.

Let's talk about hypocrisy. That is what we are hearing in this Chamber. That is what we hear all the time from a Republican Party that loves the rhetoric, that loves to use the victimhood of people like Laken Riley for political purposes, but this is a Republican Party that does not want to solve this problem, will not take any serious step to solve this problem, and is trying to create a fraud on the American people by pretending that it cares about this problem.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I want to close where I began, by expressing my deepest condolences to the family of Laken Riley. I only wish that we were debating a bill worthy of her name. Instead, we have the latest Republican press release, a bill that serves as an excuse to target and demonize immigrants while making our country no safer. I hope that my Republican colleagues will change course and choose to work with Democrats and with the administration in a constructive manner that improves our immigration system and makes our border more secure.

Until then, I must urge Members to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BISHOP of North Carolina.

H.R. 7511 is but the latest effort by Republicans to do something about the harm that confronts our Nation from an uncontrolled border by the determined action of President Biden and Democrats.

H.R. 2 is an extensive bill with many provisions and extensive reform. Democrats have ignored it. This bill is exceedingly simple and straightforward. Democrats attack it. The excuses for doing nothing never end.

The only answers offered by Democrats are to spend more money processing more aliens faster into the country, making the problem worse, and yet they always deflect blame to someone else for the calamitous results of their policies.

This bill is very straightforward. The objection that a thief should not be deported until after a conviction leaves Americans to be victimized for all the time that would have gone by until a conviction. It is not required under the law.

The distinction between the point the gentleman from New York made about Mr. Massie's bill concerning the use of facial recognition technology, that is about American citizens. The people involved here have no right to be in this country. They are not supposed to be here.

They also object that the standing change, that the conferral of standing on State attorneys general is unconstitutional, will not work, but it is Justice Kavanaugh in the opinion of the Court in United States v. Texas who said:

For example, Congress might specifically authorize suits against the executive branch by a defined set of plaintiffs who have suffered concrete harms by executive under- enforcement and specifically authorize the judiciary to enter appropriate orders requiring additional arrests or prosecutions by the executive branch.

This bill takes that invitation from the Court to act. It is far past the time for President Biden to act. He will not act. Let's act in this United States Congress.

We have the chance to give States the ability to fight back. We have the chance to recognize Laken Riley's story as a tragedy. There need not be other tragedies.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the Laken Riley Act, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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