The Laken Riley Act is Anti-Black: A Pipeline to Mass Detention and Deportation
Jan 10th, 2025 – The Black Alliance for Justice Immigration (BAJI) sent a letter to Congress expressing our opposition to any amendments or bills that allow law enforcement to further criminalize immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, with mandatory or indefinite detention. Our opposition includes bill H.R. 29 (Laken Riley Act), formally known as H.R. 7511, during the 118th Congress.
The Laken Riley Act has now passed the House and awaits an almost guaranteed passage in the Senate. This is a draconian and anti-Black piece of legislation that prioritizes and glorifies the cruel and discriminatory criminalization of migrants. Policies that criminalize Black people fail to address the interpersonal harms and traumas we experience in our communities. Policies that increase the power of the police and expand mass incarceration do not keep people safe, instead, they threaten the integrity and well-being of our communities by separating and destroying Black families and communities.
The Laken Riley Act will require immigration officials to arrest and detain immigrants who are suspected of minor theft of $100 or more. It would also expand the power of state attorneys general and state officials in enforcing immigration policy which is currently under the federal government. For instance, state attorneys general will have the power to sue the federal government if they don’t forcibly return people to countries that won’t accept them. The bill will further exacerbate wrongful convictions and increase the numbers of both documented and undocumented immigrants in prison, detention and deportation.
Like all Black people in America, Black immigrants are over-represented in both the criminal justice system and in detention, from disproportionate arrest rates to over 75% of Black immigrants being deported because of contact with police. For the past seventeen years, BAJI has been raising the alarm on laws that center the role of the carceral state that effortlessly separates, excludes, and banishes Black people from our families and communities. The Lanken-Riley Act only exacerbates the existent harms and racial disparities brought on by the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill and the 1996 IIRIRA bill, which BAJI and other organizations have fought against. Our collaborative report, Criminalizing Blackness: An analysis of the impacts of the 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Immigration Bill on Black people and Policy Recommendations to Address the Harms Caused, can be found here.
We must stop running to archaic criminal provisions as solutions and take on the necessary and challenging work of focusing on modern community-led transformative solutions that improve our lives and communities.