The Laken Riley Act Is Terrible Legislation

By naming it after a murder victim, Republicans are using the emotion of her death to pass dangerous targeted legislation

Photo by Caleb Fisher on Unsplash

The Laken Riley Act, a piece of legislation using emotional messaging to enact laws that would disproportionately target Latinos, lead to the mass incarceration of noncitizens, legal or not, and grant state Attorneys General overreaching authority thinning the line between the separation powers. That it’s being used to quell the misinformation about “migrant crime” rather than Democrats taking the time to correct the record reeks of the same environment that led to the passage of the disastrous 1994 Crime Bill.

We have discussed, ad nauseam, how immigrants commit far fewer crimes than U.S.-born citizens over the last several years. Thanks to the nature of how far-right misinformation is promoted through various media platforms, it inevitably gets treated as true and lawmakers make little effort to challenge that thought. There’s no better example of that than lawmakers showing how little they know about a bill they promote in the media and on social media.

This leaves us at a crossroads wondering if they just haven’t read the bill or are intentionally lying about it, therefore, becoming purveyors of misinformation. What…