Congress recently passed the Laken Riley Act with bipartisan support. Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student murdered on Feb. 22, 2024, by an illegal alien at the University of Georgia. The murderer had been arrested previously on other charges. but had not been detained by local authorities for possible deportation by ICE.
The Laken Riley law would require that ICE be notified of those here illegally who were arrested for other crimes. It also requires those authorities to obey ICE detainers and keep them in jail.
It also would allow state attorneys general to sue the secretary of Homeland Security for injunctive relief if immigration actions such as parole, violation of detention requirements, or other policy failures harm that state or its citizens.
The bill was championed by Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman with 11 other Democratic senators also voting for it. Northeast Philadelphia Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle also voted for the bill.
However, the Philadelphia suburbs must not need the protection this bill affords, because Democratic Congresswomen Madeleine Dean, Mary Scanlon, and Chrissy Houlahan voted against it. Houlahan led the charge and wrote an op-ed for The Philadelphia Inquirer, claiming the bill was unconstitutional.
Houlahan even mentioned seeing “I’m Just a Bill” from watching Saturday “Schoolhouse Rock!” on Saturday mornings to bolster her duty to oppose the bill.
Could Houlahan’s position stem from the mushroom farms in her Chester County district rather than a children’s TV show? Those huge farms have been cited for hiring many workers who might be here illegally.
Houlahan uses the Democratic talking point that our immigration system is broken and what we need are laws like the Border Act of 2024. That law would essentially codify a surrender to former President Joe Biden’s open border policies, which set the stage for Laken Riley’s murder.
In denying that American citizens are being harmed by people who are here illegally, Houlahan attacks the cost of the law.
Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, was confronted last Sunday by ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz about the cost of deporting criminal illegal immigrants. Homan pushed back by asking how can we put a price tag on the lives of people like Laken Riley and hundreds of other Americans.
The inescapable fact is that Laken Riley would be alive today if the person who killed her had been held for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ ICE].
Are the voters in the Delaware Valley supportive of opposition to commonsense laws like the Laken Riley Act? Or are these areas immune from all the problems caused by Biden’s open border failures? Hundreds of polls show illegal immigrant crime is right there with inflation as a problem that Americans are most concerned about. I don’t think so, and when the ICE officers target criminal illegal aliens in the Philadelphia area, it will be very interesting to see the reaction in the suburbs to how many murderers, rapists, and drug dealers ICE arrests and deports.
The ICE operation so far in cities like Chicago has underlined the human cost of so-called sanctuary city policies. Homan has pointed out that violent criminals have been living among us. And those wanted criminals will not be allowed to find sanctuary in churches and schools.
Fetterman, Boyle, and other Democrats who voted for the Laken Riley Act understand that significant numbers of Americans support the removal of criminal aliens. When will the Philadelphia suburbs support that commonsense reality?