
Laken Riley Act mandates detention of non-citizens arrested for theft, burglary
President Donald Trump signed a law Wednesday to crack down on illegal immigration in honor of a murdered Georgia nursing student.
The Laken Riley Act requires “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to detain certain non-U.S. nationals (aliens under federal law) who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting,” the law states.
“The bill also authorizes states to sue the federal government for decisions or alleged failures related to immigration enforcement,” it states.
The act received bipartisan support, “marking a major shift for Democrats, who did not advance the legislation in the Senate last year,” NPR reported.
At the bill signing, Trump recognized Riley as “a brilliant and beautiful 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia” who was “the best in her class.”
“While on a run, Laken was attacked, viciously assaulted, beaten, brutalized, and murdered by an illegal alien who was set loose into our country by the last administration,” Trump said.
He also said that Jose Ibarra, who was a member of a Venezuelan prison gang, trespassed across the southern border in 2022.
He was “apprehended by border patrol, but under the cruel policies of the last administration, instead of being deported as he should have been, he was released into the United States,” Trump said.
Before attacking Riley, Ibarra had been arrested in New York City for child endangerment and later in Georgia for stealing from a Walmart, the New York Post reported.
“We’re tracking down the illegal alien criminals and we’re detaining them and we’re throwing them the hell out of our country,” Trump said. “We have no apologies, and we’re moving forward very fast.”
“It’s a landmark law that we are doing today, it will save countless innocent American lives,” the president said.
Riley’s parents and sister attended the signing at the White House. Her mother, Allyson Phillips, gave a short statement expressing gratitude to lawmakers and the president for ensuring the bill named in her daughter’s honor was passed.
“What we are hoping for is that her life saves lives,” Phillips said.
Riley was a nursing student at Augusta University. She was murdered while on a run at the University of Georgia in Feb. 2024, The College Fix previously reported.
During the signing, Trump also announced he will “instruct the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare a 30,000-person migrant facility at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba,” The Washington Post reported.
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” the president said, according to NBC News. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.”
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