CNN
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Anti-immigration officials and federal judges would have new power to dictate enforcement of immigration rules — including whether to detain individual migrants — under a Republican Party bill that has been passed the House and advances to the Senate with bipartisan support.
The Laken Riley Act aims to overturn Supreme Court precedent and give states like Texas the ability to bring the types of immigration lawsuits against the federal government that have been rejected by the courts, including by conservative judges, according to legal experts.
But it would go further, also authorizing state attorneys general to sue to overturn the release decisions of individual immigrants – and even to obtain wide-ranging sanctions against a foreign country that refuses to accept an eligible national for expulsion.
With Democrats eager to show they were pivoting on an issue that cost them dearly in the 2024 elections, the bill passed the House and easily cleared its first procedural hurdle in the Senate, with just nine senators voting against this stage on Thursday. But giving states new authorities to sue appears to be a flash point for some Democrats, who want changes before the final vote.
“I don’t think we want the entire immigration system to be brought to district courts across the country,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters last week. Republicans will likely need the votes of seven Democrats for final approval; 33 members of the Democratic caucus voted in favor of moving to the next procedural step.
The bill would give state attorneys general multiple ways to intervene in how the federal government enforces immigration law.
States could sue if they believe the Department of Homeland Security has not enforced the full scope of the bill’s mandates that certain immigrants be detained.
They could also file federal lawsuits to challenge decisions by DHS or immigration judges to release immigrants arrested for alleged crimes in their states.
Notably, the new legal powers would only flow in one direction. States could sue the federal government for deciding to release an undocumented migrant from detention, but it does not allow state lawsuits when a person is illegally detained.
And attorneys general could also ask a federal court to order the U.S. State Department to stop issuing visas to a country that refused to accept nationals eligible for deportation.
“This could allow a single district court judge to trigger a massive international incident with potentially far-reaching consequences for the U.S. economy and for immigration more broadly,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a recent call. with journalists. “There is no reason why Congress should allow state attorneys general to essentially decide who we sanction as a nation. »
Defenders of the measure say the provisions are necessary after President Joe Biden and previous administrations refused to use all the tools given to the executive branch by Congress to crack down on migrant crimes.
The legislation is named after Laken Riley, a student who was raped and killed by an undocumented immigrant who had previously been arrested and released several times. Condemnation of her murder – and of Biden’s immigration policies, which Republicans say were the cause – played an important role in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and that of the Republicans who voted against it.
The attorneys general provisions are the parts of the bill that have “the most strength,” said Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who is championing the bill. “The bill would lose 90 percent of its luster if withdrawn.”
The judicial provisions have not received much attention compared to the parts of the bill that would mandate the detention of migrants accused of certain crimes.
Among the new offenses that would make an immigrant eligible for mandatory detention under the bill are nonviolent crimes such as shoplifting and theft. Critics say these warrants will divert resources devoted to arresting and detaining violent criminals who are in the United States illegally.
Along with the attorneys general provisions, the bill’s architects sought to pair those requirements with new mechanisms that “give states a way to fight back or challenge a president who chooses not to enforce the law,” Jessica said. Vaughan, director of policy studies for Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter immigration policies.
“States have tried many types of lawsuits to get the courts to force the Biden administration to live up to its law enforcement responsibilities, and they have not had much success,” she said. declared.
In 2023, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas and Louisiana lacked standing to challenge the Biden administration’s changes to government deportation priorities. Biden’s policy favored deporting immigrants who posed a threat to national security or violent criminals rather than those charged with less serious offenses.
The new bill would seek to overturn that precedent by giving states the right to sue for such changes in homeland security policy. They would also be allowed to challenge in federal court decisions by immigration judges, who report to the U.S. attorney general and the Justice Department, to release individual immigrants.
But the stakes are particularly high over provisions authorizing lawsuits seeking court-ordered visa bans against a so-called “recalcitrant country” that will not accept an immigrant eligible for deportation into the country. ‘State. The United States is unable to return certain nationalities due to frosty relations with some countries, such as Venezuela.
Such a provision would, for example, allow Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to seek a ban on all visas for skilled workers from China or an end to all business tourism from India, because these countries refuse the repatriation of their citizens, according to Reichlin-Melnick. .
If the bill ultimately becomes law, this provision, and perhaps others, will likely be challenged in court.
Acknowledging “legitimate concerns” about the bill’s visa sanctions section, Vaughan said that, at the very least, the court battles could “get some sort of clarification on how the federal government can be pushed to do your job more effectively.”
Murphy, who did not vote in the bill’s procedural vote Thursday, said the attorneys general’s provisions would “make the immigration system much, much, much more complicated, byzantine and confusing.”
“The underlying bill seems poorly constructed, but we could potentially improve it,” he said.
CNN’s Ted Barrett, Sarah Ferris and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.