Albany, NY- New York State Council of Churches is joining 100’s of faith groups and organizations to stop mass deportation. We ask our partners and friends to immediately call or write Senators Schumer and Gillibrand to the passage of The Laken Riley Act (S. 5/H.R. 29). Advocates feel the bill is beyond repair and the hams it would cause cannot be addressed through the amendment process.  “It is a truly shocking piece of legislation that would require mandatory detention of a huge number of people merely for arrest or admission of low-level crimes - not just charges or convictions. It would also allow states to sue if the federal government doesn't detain in some scenarios, which is a direct attack on our federalist system of government. Its brief provisions are reactionary, fear-mongering, xenophobic, and racist, and it presents a direct threat to core due process protections,”  Lauren Des Rosiers, the Director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Albany Law School writes.

The Senate vote summary is available here (you can see that both Gillibrand and Schumer voted in favor) and the House vote record here.

Here is an email  template from the Detention Watch Network that we ask everyone in the faith community to use to call on New York State Senators Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand to do the right thing and vote “No” on the Laken Riley Act.

Senator Kristen Gillibrand
478 Russell
Washington, DC 20510
Email:  https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/contact/email-me
Tel. (202) 224-4451
Fax (202) 228-4977

Senator Chuck Schumer
322 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Email: https://www.schumer.senate.gov/contact/message-chuck
Phone: (202) 224-6542
Fax: (202) 228-3027

Dear xx,

I urge Members of Congress to vote NO on the Laken Riley Act. This bill cynically manipulates a personal tragedy to criminalize and demonize immigrant communities. It would subject immigrants to prolonged, indefinite detention without bond based on mere allegations of petty offenses and gives individual states standing to override the executive branch's federal immigration policy. The bill is nothing short of a blank check for discriminatory and anti-immigrant state attorney generals to unleash chaos on the immigration system.

What the bill says:

This bill requires the mandatory immigration arrest and detention – without access to bail – of any undocumented person convicted of or merely arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting related offenses. There is no statute of limitations and no mechanism for the individual to contest their immigration detention in order to resolve the underlying criminal charges against them (if charges are even brought).

The bill provides individual States with standing – regardless of whether they have any legitimate interest or stake – to bring litigation against the federal government with regard to any allegation that the federal government is improperly implementing the detention and removal provisions of federal law, visa related provisions, or its discretionary parole authority.

Why the mandatory detention provisions of the bill would be harmful in practice:

Laken Riley’s death is a tragedy. But exploiting that individual tragedy to demonize all immigrants is bad policy, and opens the door for harmful and dangerous rhetoric. Congress should not harm many people because one person was harmed.

The bill subjects individuals merely arrested for certain offenses, including petty offenses such as shoplifting, to mandatory detention even when no criminal charges are brought. It would encourage anti-immigrant law enforcement to profile people they believe to be undocumented and arrest them for trumped up charges, knowing such an arrest would lead to their indefinite incarceration. Such profiling disparately harms Black and Brown immigrant communities.

Mandatory immigration detention – detention without access to a bond or bail hearing and with no mechanism for release prior to deportation – is a harmful retrogressive practice that should be ended, not expanded. There is no other area of American law where people can be locked up for prolonged periods without any individualized determination of the necessity of such detention. Mandatory detention premised merely on an arrest is unprecedented even within immigration laws.

In the criminal punishment system, there is a presumption favoring pretrial release and individuals detained for criminal proceedings are entitled to individualized bond hearings, regardless of the severity of the charges against them. Mandatory detention takes away this discretion from judges, forcing them to deprive everyone of their liberty, regardless of the severity of their conduct. It also undermines finality in criminal proceedings: unlike their citizen counterparts, noncitizens subject to mandatory detention are precluded from appearing at their criminal hearings to resolve their charges. Jailing and deporting noncitizens preemptively based on charges also undermines victims' access to justice, as federal immigration authorities effectively short-circuit criminal proceedings that would resolve charges and address any culpability.

Why the standing provisions of the bill would be harmful in practice:

The doctrine of “standing” is critical to maintaining the proper balance of power in our democracy. Article III of the U.S. Constitution requires that a case or controversy exist for the federal courts to intervene, and the courts have long held that an entity or person must face possible, meaningful harm to be able to make out such a case or controversy. This bill attempts to simply throw this doctrine in the trash and have Congress decide a question squarely within the judicial branch’s arena.

This provision would open the floodgates to state lawsuits against the federal government on the basis of any discretionary decision to release individuals. In recent years, the attorneys general of Texas and Louisiana have repeatedly asked federal courts to find they have “standing” to challenge federal immigration laws on the basis of openly discriminatory claims that their states are being harmed by public expenditures such as education, health care, and criminal legal programs, only when those funds are being spent on immigrants. This bill would essentially rubber stamp these claims, giving state governments legal authority to challenge any immigration policy with which they disagree, regardless of the xenophobic or discriminatory nature of that disagreement.

This provision would also sow chaos, preventing the establishment of coherent federal policy and forcing the Department of Homeland Security to bend to the will of whichever litigious states make it to court first. It would undermine the rule of law and would make immigration enforcement even more expensive and cumbersome.

We urge Members of Congress not to succumb to a political ploy that manipulates a tragic act to demonize and criminalize an entire group of people. Anti-immigrant Members of Congress have long sought to dehumanize and stigmatize immigrants by conflating immigration with decreased public safety.  Evidence shows that immigrants make our communities stronger by invigorating local economies and fortifying urban development and cultural growth. As the mayor of Athens-Clarke County recently said, the conversation about Laken Riley’s death should be focused on mourning the tragic loss endured by her family and loved ones because of the acts of one person, not an entire group.

We recommend a NO vote on the Laken Riley Act. Thank you and please reach out with any questions.

Best regards,
xx

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