By Matt Lammens 
Photo: (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
On February 22, 2024, 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley was murdered during her morning jog on the University of Georgia’s Athens campus by Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan immigrant who entered the U.S. through Mexico illegally in 2022. Ibarra was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole last November.
With the murder taking place just nine months before the 2024 presidential election, in which “securing the border” was once again at the forefront of the Republican Party platform, the Trump campaign targeted the Biden Administration’s immigration policies. At a campaign rally in Rome, Georgia in March 2024, President Trump blamed President Biden directly for Riley’s death, claiming she “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States.” Nearly a year later, President Trump has signed a bill named in honor of Laken Riley that will require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “detain migrants if they are charged with certain criminal offenses, including theft, shoplifting, burglary, assault against law enforcement or any crimes that result in death ‘or serious bodily injury of another person.’” The bill also enables state attorneys general to “sue the federal government if their residents feel they have been harmed by national immigration policies.” Before delving into the bill’s evolution and concerns about its potential impacts, examining the details of Ibarra’s time in the United States helps explain how the bill’s provisions emerged.
Context
Although Ibarra was arrested at the southern border in 2022, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stated “he was paroled and released for further processing,” which was done through a parole policy under the Biden Administration implemented to help relieve officials at the border who were overwhelmed with crossings. According to the House Judiciary Committee, which reviewed Ibarra’s DHS alien file, DHS determined Ibarra’s release was “warranted” due to “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit,” and he was “released with [an] I-94 as an alternate to detention as a condition of parole.” An I-94 is a document issued to aliens “who are admitted to the U.S., who are adjusting status while in the U.S. or extending their stay, among other things,” and it is what allowed Ibarra to stay while his immigration case was being processed.
With an extended stay, Ibarra then went from Texas to New York, where ICE claims he was arrested in September of 2023 for allegedly “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation” for having his son on the back of a moped without a helmet. He was “released by the NYPD before a detainer could be issued.” Had a detainer– a notice from DHS to a law enforcement agency that ICE intends to assume custody of an individual– been issued, ICE would have assumed custody of Ibarra from the NYPD. This aspect of the story appears unclear as an ABC News article from February 27, 2024 reported that the NYPD released a statement in response to ICE claiming “There is no arrest on file with the name mentioned (Jose Ibarra) in 2023.” In an article published in mid-November of 2024, CNN claims that on November 13, 2024, NYPD’s public information office reiterated in an email to CNN that “there are no arrests (of Ibarra) on file.” Despite this discrepancy, articles from major news outlets like the BBC and the Wall Street Journal only reference or allude to the ICE statement.
Eventually, Ibarra and his roommate, Rosbeli Flores-Bello, moved from a migrant shelter in New York to Athens, Georgia, to live with Ibarra’s brother Diego. Flores-Bello testified that Diego had encouraged Ibarra to move to Athens for work opportunities, where Diego was allegedly employed by the University of Georgia food services staff. After about a month of living there, Ibarra and Diego were accused of shoplifting from a Walmart in Athens, for which they both received citations and were let go. This was Ibarra’s last interaction with the law before the murder.
ABC News reports that Diego was also in the country illegally and that he entered the country illegally twice in 2023: on his first attempt he was removed to Mexico, and during his second attempt he allegedly assaulted a Border Patrol agent who tried to arrest him. After agreeing to a plea deal where he was “released on an alternative to detention” and given an ankle monitor, authorities claim he cut off the ankle monitor in Colorado. Not having a green card ended up being a future issue for Diego, as he was arrested and charged for presenting his “fraudulent green card” to police when they stopped and questioned him for matching Ibarra’s description the day of the murder.
History of the Laken Riley Act
In the wake of the tragedy, Representative Mike Collins of Georgia’s 10th Congressional District (containing the city of Athens) introduced a new border security bill on March 1, 2024. During a speech on the House floor, he called upon his colleagues to “rebuke [President Biden] for the open border policies that led directly to Laken Riley’s murder” by voting in its favor and also expressed frustration over Ibarra’s ability to remain in the country despite his repeated conflicts with the law. The bill included a section denouncing President Biden’s border policies (even addressing Vice President Harris as the “Border Czar”), calling on President Biden to increase border security, reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and end his “abuse of parole authority.”
Named in honor of Riley, the Laken Riley Act aimed to “require the Department of Homeland Security to detain certain non-U.S. nationals (aliens under federal law) who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting,” and authorize states to “sue the federal government for decisions or alleged failures related to immigration enforcement.” With such legislation in place, Ibarra theoretically would have been detained after he was arrested for shoplifting and would not have had the opportunity to murder Riley. Just one week after the bill was introduced, the House voted on and passed the bill by 271 yeas (all 214 Republicans and 37 Democrats) to 170 nays (all Democrats). Despite bipartisan support in the U.S. House, the bill “had little chance” of being taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate, and was ultimately not voted on.
With Republican success in the 2024 Election, in which the party maintained a majority in the House (220 to 215 Democrats) and regained a majority in the Senate (53 Republicans to 47 Democrats), Representative Collins reintroduced the Laken Riley Act in the House on January 3, 2025. Before election season, Democrats had already begun shifting towards the right on immigration policies, but losses in November appeared to further the trend. As a result, the bill passed the House once again, with Republicans voting along party lines and now 48 Democrats voting in favor. Subsequently, the bill passed the Senate with 64 yeas (including 12 Democrats who voted in favor) and an amended version passed the House a second time before going to the president. The list of offenses that require detainment has been expanded to include “assault of a law enforcement officer offense, or any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury to another person” per amendments by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX). Had this law been in place when Ibarra’s brother Diego entered the country for a second time, the federal government would have been required to detain him instead of letting him partake in an Alternative to Detention (ATD) program.
Democrats in the Senate suggested amendments as well, but none were adopted. This included an amendment by Senator Christopher Coons (D-DE) to strike the section of the bill authorizing state attorneys general to sue federal immigration authorities for “alleged violations relating to the detention of aliens,” which received 46 votes in favor to 49 votes against. Other amendments were proposed but not considered, such as Senator Mazie K. Hirono’s (D-HI) amendment that would have stopped the separation of families with children under the age of 16 and another that would have prohibited minors (those under 18 years of age) from being detained.
Backlash and Concerns
Despite the bill’s success in Congress, different organizations and politicians have expressed concerns since the bill was reintroduced in early January. Several organizations including the American Immigration Council, the International Refugee Assistance Project, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have shared similar messages. In a letter drafted to members of the Senate, the ALCU urged them to vote “no” on the act, claiming the bill would encourage “discriminatory and arbitrary overdetention” as a result of requiring the government to “detain people who have not been convicted or even charged with a crime” even for nonviolent offenses like shoplifting. It also suggested that the law would allow “hostile state officials to sue federal officials over individual immigration decisions they disapprove of,” potentially directing national immigration policy. States have attempted to do this in the past, such as in 2021 when Texas and Louisiana “sued the Biden Administration in April 2021 for changing immigration enforcement priorities,” but in an 8-1 decision the Supreme Court ruled the two states lacked legal standing for the suit. However, the Laken Riley Act would grant states some legal standing to sue the federal government for “violation of the detention and removal requirements” or policy that “harms” the state.
Democratic Senators have also voiced concerns, such as Senators Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). In a joint statement regarding the passage of the bill in the Senate, the senators expressed disapproval of the detention of “low-risk individuals, like an undocumented ten-year old merely accused of stealing a pack of gum” who would have to be detained by ICE, and states being able to challenge immigration policy in court. Separately, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) referred to the bill as “a joke,” noting “It claims to be locking people up and then allocates no money to do that.”
In December 2024, ICE gave a background of the potential impact of the Laken Riley Act (as introduced during the 118th Congress) and specific resources ICE would need to enforce the bill, including a funding increase of approximately $3.2 billion for an increase in detention capacity by more than 60,000 beds and an additional $15 million to pay 61 additional employees for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). Recently, however, the Department of Homeland Security warned lawmakers the bill would cost $26.9 billion to implement in its first year and “would be impossible for [ICE] to execute within existing resources,” and that the previous estimate from last December is inaccurate because it “does not represent the full cost of implementation.”
What the future holds
While the impacts of the Laken Riley Act are yet to be felt, there are things to look out for going forward: more detainments, potential lawsuits against the federal government by states regarding immigration, determining new funding, potential legal challenges, and how it may interact with President Trump’s pledges for mass deportation. In the meantime, President Trump has already quickly changed the immigration system through executive orders signed on his first day in office. These included the freezing of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, calling for the “immediate removal of those in the U.S. without legal status,” and increasing security at the southern border.