President Donald Trump has officially signed the Laken Riley Act into law. Under it, Homeland Security is required to detain and deport any undocumented immigrant arrested for low-level crimes like shoplifting, along with violent crimes like assault on a federal officer.
It passed Congress with bipartisan support — including from Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, who co-sponsored the Senate version. Rights groups have repeatedly warned it erodes due process for immigrants and has no carve-outs for minors.
Leecia Welch is the deputy litigation director of the legal aid group Children’s Rights and co–counsel in ongoing Flores Settlement negotiations. The settlement governs the conditions in which immigrant children are allowed to be held in federal custody, including facilities run by Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“Essentially, in the name of public safety, the Laken Riley Act, subjects children to indefinite, no bond, detention in ICE facilities, for offenses that are as trivial as taking candy from the corner store,” she said.
Welch says it’s also unclear how and where people would be detained — including children. She says the Flores Settlement can govern conditions for centers that house children, but may not be able to stave off indefinitely detention.
“The vast majority of the children that could get ensnared due to the Laken Riley Act’s requirements, would not be saved from indefinite detention by the Flores Settlement,” she said.
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Thousands of refugees in the U.S. lost health coverage on Oct. 1 as new Medicaid eligibility rules took effect. In Arizona, unlike in most states, even children and pregnant women are being dropped. -
On Monday, dozens of agents swarmed a stretch of private land where the activists had been camped in and around a centuries-old cottonwood tree. Contractors tore down the tree and agents made multiple arrests. -
New research shows the ancient site is much older than previously thought. In fact, it’s now confirmed to be the oldest known scientifically dated geoglyph in the Americas, 2,000 years older than the first Pyramids built in Egypt. -
Protesters have been camped out in a plot of private ranch land in Lochiel for over two months now, trying to block wall construction as it neared a towering cottonwood tree that was the last of a grove slated for destruction to make way for two, parallel steel bollard walls. -
Ahmed Soliman has no ties to Equatorial Guinea. The 30-year-old man was born in Egypt and brought to the United States. when he was just 4 years old. He grew up in Phoenix. Now he’s believed to be in a hospital in the African nation.
