Civil rights groups warn Laken Riley bill could open the door to Trump’s mass deportations
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Opponents call the bill a ‘slippery slope’ for Trump’s agenda and a ‘backdoor to mass detention’. Immigration attorneys and civil rights groups warn that the first immigration bill of the new Congress is opening the door to Donald Trump’s planned “mass deportation operation” — his pledge to invoke a national emergency, deploy military assets and send state and local law enforcement into immigrant communities across the country within his first days in office.
![[Immigrants turn themselves in to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers after crossing over a section of border wall January 5 in Arizona.]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/09/21/2192508309.jpg)
The Senate voted 84-9 on Thursday to begin debate on the Laken Riley Act, with only nine Democratic senators voting against it and five not voting at all. The House passed the bill by a vote of 264-159 on Tuesday, with 48 Democrats voting for it. Republicans, led by Trump, have consistently hammered Democrats on the US-Mexico border, often using dehumanizing language that the United States was being “invaded.” The bill was named after Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student killed by Jose Ibarra, who was in the country illegally from Venezuela.
In a letter to Congress, the ACLU called the legislation a “slippery slope” to Trump’s anti-immigration agenda that exploits Riley’s death “to escalate a consistently xenophobic and false narrative about immigrants.”. “It is also a serious threat to civil liberties that would inflict damage on an already taxed immigration system, invite racial profiling of longtime residents, and violate bedrock constitutional principles,” the letter said.
