The House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Act on Thursday.
The act requires ICE to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft or burglary.
The Laken Riley Act was named after a 22-year-old college nursing student who was killed at the University of Georgia.
Laken Riley was only 22 years old. Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, was charged with her murder.
He had previously been arrested in New York but was not detained by ICE.
Via Fox News:
“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,” Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., who introduced the bill, told Fox News Digital earlier this week. He said Thursday after its passage in a post on X, “I now urge the Senate to take up this bill immediately.”
Before being charged with felony murder, Ibarra was once arrested in New York for endangering a child, and he was cited in Georgia for misdemeanor shoplifting in October 2023 along with his brother, Diego Ibarra, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Collins, who represents Georgia’s 10th Congressional District of Athens – where the fatal attack occurred on Feb. 22 – said the murder of Riley is a “wake-up call” for America and the bill seeks to combat the “illegal crime wave” that he attributes to the ongoing border crisis.
The Laken Riley Act would “require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to issue a detainer for illegal aliens who are charged or cited with local theft or burglary.”
The bill will also allow individual states to take action against the federal government “if an immigration related action harms the state or its citizens.”
“Allow states to sue the federal government for injunctive relief if an immigration related action (parole, violation of detention requirements, etc.), harms the state or its citizens. This gives states legal resource to force the federal government to address certain failures related to border security,” a press release announcing the legislation read.
While this is a good first step the legislation still has to pass in the Senate which despite the national outrage over Riley’s murder is unlikely.
The odds of Chuck Schumer bringing up this bill and Joe Biden signing it into law seem slim.
That said it’s a step in the right direction.
Voters need to throw the Democrats out in November, at all levels, so common sense can be restored to government.
