The House is scheduled to vote this week on a bill to condemn the Biden administration for the catch-and-release of a migrant accused of killing a student on a Georgia college campus.
The Laken Riley Act, named after the student victim, would also elevate being charged with theft or shoplifting to deportable crimes and order the federal government to detain immigrants without documentation who run afoul of the new standard.
Rep. Mike Collins, Georgia Republican, said his bill also gives states a new legal tool to use against the federal government to try to force stiffer immigration enforcement. Under the provision, state attorneys general could sue the feds if they can prove their states are being harmed by the administration’s catch-and-release policies at the border or the interior.
“The senseless murder of Laken Riley by Jose Ibarra, who had no business being in this country, was another wake-up call as Americans experience an illegal alien crime wave because of Joe Biden’s open border and local sanctuary city policies,” Mr. Collins said when announcing the bill.
Homeland Security says Mr. Ibarra, a Venezuelan, sneaked into the U.S. in 2022 and was caught and released under the Biden administration’s expansive use of parole powers.
He notched an arrest in New York last year but was released before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could place a detainer, or request that he be turned over for deportation purposes.
He was also arrested in Athens, Georgia, for shoplifting but was released without ICE taking him into custody, allowing him to be out on the streets when Riley was slain.
His brother, Diego Ibarra, came illegally to the U.S. in 2023 and racked up three arrests including for shoplifting. He was stopped in connection with the Riley slaying. Police said they found him with fake immigration documents, too.
In the Washington area, a man charged with murder in the shooting of a 2-year-old was twice arrested for theft in Montgomery County but was protected by that community’s sanctuary laws.
House Republicans are moving quickly to ride the wave of attention from the string of high-profile crimes attributed to immigrants who are in the country illegally.
In addition to Mr. Collins’ bill, which will see floor action, the House Judiciary Committee said it will work on three more measures this week to boost deportations of immigrants without documentation who commit robbery or who assault police.
That latter bill is a response to the high-profile mob attack on New York City cops in January.
Immigrant rights activists complain that the GOP is tarnishing other migrants by highlighting the crimes.
All of these efforts are unlikely to see action in the Democrat-led Senate, even if they do clear the GOP-run House.
“There is no crime surge caused by migrants. It’s 100% made up. A right-wing invention,” Sen. Christopher Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, wrote on social media.
He said that “migrants commit crimes at [a] rate lower than those born here.”
Studies show that statement is true for documented immigrants, but the results are more mixed when looking only at undocumented immigrants. Both the Cato Institute and the Center for Immigration Studies have examined Texas data that gives a deep level of granularity on immigrants without documentation, and they came to opposite conclusions on the relative homicide conviction rate compared to the native-born.
For some Republicans, the comparison is irrelevant. They argue a crime committed by a migrant who entered the country illegally is a crime that could have been prevented had the government done its job in blocking the migrant’s entry.
“To put this in simpler terms: if this border was secure, and Athens not a sanctuary city, Laken Riley would be alive,” Mr. Collins said on social media last week.
His bill also wades into a tricky legal issue by giving states the legal standing to sue the federal government if they can prove they’ve been affected by parole or detention decisions.
That could reverse a ruling by the Supreme Court last year that severely limited states’ ability to sue over immigration matters.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.