Minnesota politicians weigh in on Laken Riley Act, as Mary Moriarty blasts the bill as xenophobic

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty this week urged the U.S. Senate to vote down the Laken Riley Act, a bill that would require law enforcement officers working with the Department of Homeland Security to detain and potentially deport illegal immigrants who have been arrested for some nonviolent crimes.

At a news conference Tuesday, Moriarty said the bill was xenophobia masquerading as criminal justice and would have a chilling impact on the rights of minorities and women. Riley was a nursing student in Athens, Ga., who was kidnapped and murdered by José Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan who had entered the United States illegally.

Under the act, detainment and deportation proceedings would take place for lower-level offenses such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting over $100. Even an arrest alone rather than a criminal conviction would also trigger detainment.

“In a rational world we would honor [Riley’s] memory by focusing on preventing serious violence,” Moriarty said. “We would do that by, among other things, putting more resources into holding those charged with sexual assault and murder accountable. This bill does not do that.”

Now that Republicans control Washington, Congress has made it a top priority to carry out Trump’s campaign promise to get tough on immigration. The Laken Riley Act is the first bill the Republican controlled House voted on this month.

The bill passed 264-159. Minnesota’s four Republican House members voted in favor of the bill. And Rep. Angie Craig, who has made immigration a cornerstone of her campaign, was one of the 48 Democrats to support the bill — and the lone Democrat in the Minnesota delegation to vote in favor of it.

Republican Rep. Tom Emmer said anyone characterizing the bill as anything less than a public safety initiative is ignoring reality.

“The Laken Riley Act is a common-sense piece of legislation aimed at protecting our communities by ensuring that criminal illegal immigrants are quickly and permanently removed,” Emmer said in a statement to the Star Tribune. “This bill is about safeguarding our neighborhoods from violent offenders.”

The bill is now being considered in the U.S. Senate, which has taken several procedural votes on the legislation, as Democrats have been trying to add amendments to the bill before its final passage.

It’s unclear how Minnesota’s two Democrats in the Senate will vote on the bill during passage, a date that’s yet to be determined.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is one of the Democrats who has voted to advance the bill during the procedural votes in the Senate in recent weeks and has been working to add amendments related to public safety resources and for Dreamers — children of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States.

Sen. Tina Smith has been one of the handful of Democrats voting against the bill as it’s been advancing.

Smith believes that, as the bill stands now, it’s “not a serious solution to the problem.”

“Rather than improving public safety, the bill as written would undermine crime-fighting efforts and drain resources away from strategies we know to be more effective than mass detention,” Smith said in a statement. “Moreover, the $26 billion it is estimated to cost just in the first year is exorbitant — nearly 40 times as much as we spend on enforcing the Violence Against Women Act."

The law wouldn’t have any prosecutorial connection to Moriarty’s office in Hennepin County, because it would involve federal detention through U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it wouldn’t take a criminal charge or conviction to detain someone who violates the law.

But Moriarty said the bill could make it harder to prosecute criminal cases in Hennepin County because those threatened with deportation or detention because of their citizenship status will be “terrified to come forward” when they are the victim of a crime or testify in court about crimes they witness.

“Thousands of noncitizens have been witnesses in serious criminal cases prosecuted by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office,” Moriarty said. “That demonstrates the threat to public safety.”

Moriarty said the bill is fear-mongering based on the idea that immigrants, both legal and illegal, drive crime in society. She said statistics show immigrants commit crime at “substantially lower rates than citizens.”

Joining Moriarty in voicing opposition to the bill were a cadre of human rights activists from the Twin Cities, including Elliott Payne, the Minneapolis City Council president; Guadalupe Lopez, executive director of Violence Free Minnesota, and Amirthini Keefe, executive director for the Domestic Abuse Project.

Keefe said naming the bill after Riley creates a juxtaposition with how it will affect women who experience domestic violence.

“The legislation will most certainly heighten the fear of reporting abuse among undocumented survivors, increase their vulnerability, lead to underreporting of crimes and most concerningly lead to the criminalization of survivors who are already experiencing violence,” she said.

Keefe added that undocumented women are often coerced into committing minor crimes by domestic partners who threaten reporting them to law enforcement over their citizenship status.