Trump signs Laken Riley Act; law pushes DHS to detain criminal migrants

President Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law on Wednesday, giving Homeland Security more legal tools to take even relatively low-level criminal illegal immigrants off the streets.

The bill is the first to emerge from the all-GOP controlled Congress and signed by Mr. Trump, and is a downpayment on what Republicans vow will be a series of laws designed to add legislative gravity to the new president’s promises of border security.

The law specifically orders Homeland Security to detain — and thus speed deportation of — illegal immigrants who commit theft, burglary or shoplifting offenses, as well as some major crimes such as assaulting law enforcement or killing or seriously injuring someone.

Also, the law gives state attorneys general standing to sue to force the federal government to enforce immigration law as written.

“It’s a landmark law that we’re doing today. It’s going to save countless innocent American lives,” Mr. Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House.

He said the bill was a step to overturn the “arrogant and very, very dumb policies” of his predecessor, President Biden.

Riley’s family stood behind Mr. Trump during the signing.

“Our hope moving forward is that her life saves lives,” said Allyson Phillips, Riley’s mother.

The legislation cleared Congress with bipartisan support, including Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the first Senate Democrat to back the bill, who was on hand for the signing.

“I believe Pennsylvania elected me to fight for a better commonwealth and to work with both sides of the aisle,” Mr. Fetterman said.

The law is named after Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia who was slain last year by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela. Before the murder, Jose Ibarra had been caught and released under the Biden administration’s lenient border policies and quickly amassed a criminal record here, all while remaining free in the community.

Among those charges was a child endangerment case in New York and a shoplifting arrest in Georgia.

The new law’s backers say that if it had been in place, Ibarra would have been detained. Instead, Mr. Trump said, he was out “hunting for women on whom to prey.”

Mr. Trump called Riley “brilliant and beautiful.”

“We will keep Laken’s memory alive in our hearts,” he said. “With today’s action, her name will also live forever in the laws of our country.”

Democratic opponents of the law complained that it denies illegal immigrants their due process because it applies to those who have only been arrested for a crime but not yet convicted.

Backers countered that they were still in the country illegally, and the penalty for that is supposed to be detention and deportation anyway.

Democrats were particularly incensed over the provisions that would allow state attorneys general to sue to enforce immigration law.

That provision was a response to a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that said Texas didn’t have standing to sue to stop then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s policy limiting which illegal immigrants could be arrested and deported.

Democrats said overturning that ruling would give states too much power to set national immigration priorities.