Georgia House Bill 1105 is a controversial immigration legislation that gained momentum after Laken Riley's death. It requires police and sheriff's departments to identify illegal aliens who commit crimes and work with federal immigration authorities to detain them for deportation.
You would think this bill would be common sense, right? Local law enforcement should be agreeable to keeping their communities safe by getting a handle on who is in them. If a crime is committed by an illegal alien, he should be deported. Republican State Senator John Albers voted in favor of the bill. He argued that this is a public safety bill, not an immigration bill. "We don't have folks come up afterward and say this is about immigration; this is about something else, this is about criminals that are found to be illegal aliens."
House Bill 1105 gained momentum after the death of Laken Riley, a nursing student who was murdered by an illegal alien with a criminal record as she went for a morning jog on the University of Georgia's campus. She was on a popular campus trail in broad daylight when 26-year-old Venezuelan Jose Ibarra grabbed her and murdered her. He left her body in the woods along the trail. He was charged with murder.
The governor was joined at the Georgia Public Training Center in Forsyth by First Lady Marty Kemp and several other state leaders. Local law enforcement agencies attended, too.
After he signed the bill, Governor Kemp, a Republican, spoke to reporters.
"People who thought sanctuary cities were a good idea. They are not. People have to come into the country legally. We support legal immigration, but when you got people coming in here illegally, committing crimes, multiple crimes, especially killing someone, we are not going to stand for that," Kemp said.
Jailers in Georgia must now check the immigration status of inmates. They must apply to help enforce federal immigration law. Opponents of the law said that the new law turns local law enforcement into immigration police. They said it would make illegal immigrants less willing to report crime and work with police officers. The opponents also delivered a standard talking point of the open borders crowd - immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Note that they conflated 'immigrants' - they don't distinguish between legal and illegal immigration in their arguments.
The law lays out specific requirements for how jail officials should check with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to determine whether prisoners are known to be in the country illegally. Georgia law previously only encouraged jailers to do so, but the new law makes it a misdemeanor to “knowingly and willfully” fail to check immigration status. The bill would also deny state funding to local governments that don’t cooperate.
The law also mandates that local jails apply for what is known as a 287(g) agreement with ICE to let local jailers help enforce immigration law. It is unclear how many would be accepted because President Joe Biden’s administration has de-emphasized the program. The program doesn’t empower local law enforcement to make immigration-specific arrests outside a jail.
It's important to include the denial of state funding to local governments that don't cooperate. Sometimes officials turn into activists instead of enforcers of the law and only obey the laws they like. Illegal immigration is a public safety issue. Local officials may face misdemeanor charges if they do not work with federal immigration authorities.
Governor Kemp said the bill “became one of our top priorities following the senseless death of Laken Riley.”
Latino organizations voiced concerns over racial profiling and the possibility of American citizens being mistaken for illegal aliens because of the color of their skin or their accents.
Pedro Marin, the longest-serving Latino member of the Georgia House of Representatives, said during debate that lawmakers are pursuing “fear as a strategy”
“But our community cannot and should not be collectively punished for the horrific actions of one,” he said in February.
It is not collective punishment to keep a community safe. To use a broad brush to paint law enforcement as racist and targeting people does a disservice to the police. That kind of rhetoric teaches children that the police are the enemy, not hired to protect and serve a community.
Other red states have passed bills that require law enforcement to work with the feds.
Last month, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a similar bill requiring law enforcement in the state to inform federal officials of the immigration status of a person in their custody and to cooperate with efforts to detain and remove undocumented immigrants from the country.
Similarly, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis signed three new bills in March targeting undocumented migrants that increase the maximum sentence for people driving illegally without a license; enhance penalties for a crime committed by an individual who returns to the country after deportation, and establish that Florida will not recognize identifications issued to undocumented migrants.
Notice in that reporting that elites, like those in the media, like to soften lawlessness. An 'undocumented migrant' sounds nicer than an illegal alien. That term is a constitutional one, though, and it is apt. The first action some people take is to break American immigration law and enter outside of a legal port of entry. The rule of law is important in America, or at least it used to be. Those who go on to commit more crimes should lose the privilege of remaining in America.
Progressives who turned large blue cities and states into sanctuaries for illegal aliens enabled a sense of entitlement among those who did not obey the law. Social media guides them across the border, as do human traffickers. Once here, they demand benefits like housing, education, medical care, and work permits. Without work permits, who will pick the crops? That's what Nancy Pelosi asked.
Democrats are working a plan. Joe Biden opened the southern border and let in 9 million illegal aliens so far. Democrat mayors and governors demand more federal funding to pay for the consequences of Biden's border crisis. DHS is flying illegal aliens around the country at taxpayer expense so that shrinking Democrat majority districts are held. Illegal aliens are counted in census reports. Census numbers determine the number of congressional districts in a state. All of this is not random.
This is Biden's America. Common sense laws have to be passed to keep communities safe. Democrats want blanket amnesty for all illegal aliens, hoping to benefit from their votes.
We need change. It needs to happen as soon as possible. That means the current president must not be rewarded with a second term in office. He and his merry band of Marxists are hell-bent on destroying America as we know it. The craziness must stop before something truly horrible happens.
