Hi Rulers! Welcome to the end of the week. I’m back in your inboxes after a brief hiatus last month for the holidays. … Did you miss me? I know I missed you! Let’s jump right back into it: President Donald Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law on Wednesday, marking the first bill-signing of his second presidency. But how much is the new law actually about its namesake? Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was killed while on a run in February 2024. Riley’s death was catapulted into national view when authorities revealed that the man who later was charged with her killing had illegally entered the U.S. in 2022. Jose Antonio Ibarra — a Venezuelan immigrant who had previously been arrested on separate occasions for illegal entry and child endangerment and given a citation for shoplifting — was convicted and sentenced to life without parole in November. Ibarra’s case quickly took on a life of its own, as conservative politicians and pundits used it to rile up anxieties about illegal immigration. Riley’s name quickly became a rallying cry for anti-immigration efforts, with legislators introducing a bill in her name. The Laken Riley Act lowers the bar for detaining undocumented immigrants charged with crimes, requiring the detention of migrants arrested or charged with crimes including theft and shoplifting — even if they have yet to be convicted — and allowing states to sue the federal government over perceived failures in immigration enforcement. The measure gained strong bipartisan support in Congress last week, with 46 Democrats joining House Republicans and 12 Democratic senators joining Senate Republicans to approve it. During the bill-signing ceremony on Wednesday, Trump called the law “a tremendous tribute” to the young victim. Addressing Riley’s parents and sister, who attended the signing, Trump promised: “We will keep Laken’s memory alive in our hearts forever — everyone’s hearts — with today’s action her name will also live forever in the laws of our country.” “We don’t want this to happen again,” Trump added. Backers of the law similarly argue that it will help protect women from violent actors, drawing the connection to Ibarra’s conviction in Riley’s murder. “This law will help ensure no other family experiences the tragedy Laken Riley's loved ones are living with,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), a champion of the bill, wrote on X after it passed both chambers. “If you come across our border illegally and then you commit a crime, you are going to be detained — we are not going to let you roam free across our nation.” But opponents of the bill argue the new law serves as a vehicle to bypass the right to due process and ramp up deportation of undocumented people. In a fiery argument against the measure on the House floor last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called it a “fundamental suspension of a core American value.” “If someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court without a moment to assert their right … of ‘innocent until proven guilty,’” she said. Advocates for survivors of gender-based violence argue that Riley’s case, and the movement to end violence against women more broadly, are being weaponized to target undocumented immigrants and that the new legislation won’t actually serve the women it purports to protect. Casey Swegman, director of public policy at the nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center, which serves immigrant survivors of gender-based violence, tells Women Rule the movement to end gender-based violence is being “used as a cudgel against an already incredibly vulnerable community.” “I want to see this much dedication to addressing violence against women and femicide and gender-based violence, but this bill doesn’t do that,” Swegman says. “I’m worried that the voices of survivors are getting lost in politics, and the movement for survivors is being politicized to an end that does not serve them.” The decentering of survivors within a bill named after a victim of femicide, Swegman says, not only fails to address violence against women, but actually adds another tool for abusers to perpetrate harm. According to Swegman, abusers can use the threat of deportation — now much closer within reach — to force compliance and manipulate victims. Swegman tells Women Rule she already sees plenty of cases where abusers plant an unpurchased item on their victim’s person, causing them to be detained for shoplifting. Now, that detention can land them in the immigration system, or “lost in the deportation machine.” Both Swegman and Cristina Velez, legal and policy director at ASISTA, a national immigrant rights group, say they wish Congress would devote its resources to work on legislation that addresses the root causes of violence against women instead of putting such effort into passing laws like the Laken Riley Act — which Swegman adds “was not crafted with input from survivors or the advocates that serve them.” Velez says that in addition to the direct harm to victims, the legislation is also likely to impede police investigations. Under the new law, some noncitizens subjected to mandatory detention may be victims or witnesses in police cases that require coordination with criminal investigators. “It whisks them away into a really complex and expensive detention and deportation system without allowing for law enforcement to really do its job,” Velez says. She also warns the legislation is likely to be the first in a “cascading effect” of similar efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on immigration. Indeed, at the bill signing on Wednesday, Trump announced that his administration would detain tens of thousands of “the worst” undocumented immigrants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The president said he would direct federal authorities to prepare 30,000 beds at the infamous detention center. Swegman tells me that calls from survivors to the Tahirih Justice Center have nearly doubled since Trump’s inauguration and the passage of the Laken Riley Act. One survivor told Tahirih that her abuser feels “emboldened” — Swegman’s word. The message from her abuser was, in Swegman’s words: “See, no one cares about you. You’re garbage.”
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