Bad Law, Bad Politics, Bad Times
You can look at the Laken Riley Act many different ways. And they're all bad.
Lacking other pressing national concerns, the first bill passed by the shiny new U.S. House of Representatives in 2025 is the “Laken Riley Act,” which mandates detention for anyone accused of shoplifting, ever, even if they're innocent.
Sorry. Not for anyone. For immigrants only. For everyone else, we’re still going with innocent until proven guilty.
The bill and the policy it implements are all kinds of bad. It mandates more detention of immigrants before deportation, in this case of immigrants who were merely accused of shoplifting many years ago. (It does not actually change who can be deported, contrary to some confusion in the news media. Looking at you, New York Times.) The detention mandate applies to anyone who “is charged with” or “is arrested for” any kind of theft, no matter how small, and no matter when it happened. Getting convicted is not required.
So let’s say 20 years ago you got wrongly cited for shoplifting, but the charges were dropped because a store clerk realized he accused the wrong person. Charges were dropped. You shook hands, you hugged, you moved on. And since then you’ve opened a small business, sent your kids to college, mowed your lawn, coached both Little League and soccer, donated to the police benevolent society, and the firefighters, too. Thank you for your service!
You get mandatory detention.
Because the bill mandates detention based on a mere arrest — charges don’t even have to be filed (much less a conviction obtained) — the lowest ranking local police officer would gain the power to mandate the federal government to detain an immigrant. This gives individual police officers near tyrannical power over immigrants in their community. That’s a really bad idea.
The bill also empowers the nuttiest state Attorney General in America to go to court if he or she hears on Newsmax or Fox that the federal government might not be enforcing this mandatory detention strictly enough. And then it requires a federal judge to fast track the case, no matter what else is on the court’s docket. This is also not a good idea.
But forty-eight Democrats (including all three Nevada Dems: Dina Titus, Stephen Horsford, and Susie Lee) still voted yes. They want to mandate detention of immigrants on mere accusations, I guess. Democrat John Fetterman is co-sponsoring it in the Senate.
Nice. Everything is fine.
In a sane world, being terrible policy ought to be enough to get no votes, but who are we kidding. Nevertheless, we need to take stock about what this means strategically as the Trump II Era begins.
If in warfare the side that picks the terrain wins the battle, then Republicans are smart to choose this ground. Anything that connects immigrants with the whiff of crime makes public opinion swing against immigrants. By contrast, it will be easier to mobilize the public against mass deportation when the pfocus is on deportations of longterm residents, not on the criminal justice system. That will be the best terrain on which to resist mass deportation.
But even in crass political terms, this bill is unusually bad policy. It will take parents away from kids because of old shoplifting cases. And it betrays the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty, the idea that everyone should get their day in court.
Do we still believe in that?
Bad, bad, bad.