GOP House passed a bill that would give Kobach, Bailey power over immigration policy | Opinion
Do you want Kris Kobach deciding America’s immigration policy?
How about Andrew Bailey?
The Republican attorneys general of Kansas and Missouri — both enthusiastically on Donald Trump’s MAGA bandwagon — would surely welcome the opportunity, but that’s not the job voters in either state elected them to actually do.
Kobach and Bailey might get the opportunity anyway.
That’s because the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the Laken Riley Act, named for the Georgia nursing student who was tragically killed last year by an undocumented migrant.
Most of the news coverage of the bill focuses on the way it creates a new pathway to lock up and deport undocumented migrants accused — not convicted, mind you, but accused — of even low-level crimes.
But the bill also gives attorneys general the power to radically affect federal immigration policy
Under the proposed law, AGs could bring “lawsuits seeking to impose sweeping bans on all visas from countries such as India and China,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council wrote in an MSNBC op-ed. The bill would also let an attorney general sue the federal government to force deportation decisions for individual migrants.
That’s a massive shift of power away from the federal government to the states.
You think America’s immigration system is a mess now? Just wait until federal and state officials are locked in perpetual court battles to determine who gets to stay and who must leave the country.
It’ll get ugly.
Besides: You’ll remember that Kobach tried to become Donald Trump’s border czar all the way back in 2019. It didn’t happen.
If Trump wouldn’t give him that responsibility, why would Congress?
Due process denied
The rest of the bill seems to make more sense, at least on the surface. Who would argue against deporting shoplifters?
That’s probably why dozens of Democrats — including Rep. Sharice Davids, Kansas’ lone non-Republican in Congress — voted with the GOP to pass the bill in the House.
Davids “has repeatedly called for bipartisan solutions to fix our broken immigration system, and the Laken Riley Act represents a step in that direction,” her spokesman, Zac Donley, said in a statement. “While not perfect, she believes the bill, with careful oversight and future improvements, provides law enforcement with tools to enhance public safety.”
Maybe.
Another way of looking at the bill is that it empowers authorities to lock up migrants on flimsy pretexts.
A law that strips “long-time residents, children, DREAMers and many others of critical protections before or without a conviction and based on a nonviolent offense is an extreme weapon to hand to the incoming Trump administration,” the ACLU said last week in a letter to U.S. senators.
Due process? That’s officially out the window. Which should be sobering.
You could argue that all of this is what Americans voted for in November. Polls show most Americans think major changes are needed to the country’s immigration system, and most have concerns about the number of migrants entering the country illegally.
Fine.
But some of those same polls show that a majority of Americans also want undocumented migrants to have a path to citizenship, provided they meet certain requirements. And a majority of voters would approve letting migrants stay and work in the U.S. if they’re married to an American citizen.
Still other polls suggest that a majority of respondents support deportations, unless the migrants in question “have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record.”
Voters, it seems, have complex — even contradictory — thoughts about how to handle immigration.
That complexity isn’t on offer from the incoming Trump administration, though. Nor is it on display in the Laken Riley Act.
The new bill will almost certainly pass. It’s not clear, though, that it’s the immigration policy Americans actually want.
This story was originally published January 14, 2025 at 5:06 AM.