A swing-district Democrat votes "yes"
U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum voted "Yes" on the Laken Riley Act.
So did 45 other House Democrats.
It was a controversial vote for Democrats.
I got a telephone call from Janelle Bynum yesterday afternoon.
New members of Congress are advised that they need to start immediately raising campaign money for their next election, so I expected the phone call. I had contributed to her 2024 campaign.
Her district is one of Oregon's swing districts, which is relevant to her vote on the Laken Riley Act. The district includes suburban Portland plus a rural area reaching out to the upscale city of Bend. A Republican won the district from a Democrat in 2022. Bynum won it back in 2024.
Democrats controlled the congressional district boundary process but did not reach for maximum advantage in the six districts. They created four safe seats, one Republican and three Democratic, but made two seats near-tossups.
I thanked Bynum for the call and asked her how she voted on the Laken Riley Act. She said she voted for it.
I said "good."
The law had already allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and detain people here illegally, but the Laken Riley Act requires ICE to detain any undocumented immigrant who is convicted of, arrested for, or even just charged with a theft offense. The law is described by Republicans as a way to require that violent criminals be locked up and deported. Only a crazy Democrat would vote to keep murderers on the street. It is a good campaign wedge issue.
The reality is more complicated because detaining people lacking immigration status on the basis of mere accusations of minor crimes would dramatically increase deportations of people here illegally. And that is the point.
Americans got impatient with the chaos on the southern border. The new law will put millions of people here without proper papers on edge and at risk. This increases the consequences of being picked up by the police if someone is living "under the radar." Fewer new people will come and take that risk. More people will self-deport.
Border state Democratic senators, including Arizona's Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly and Nevada's Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, voted yes. So did eight other senators, all representing swing states. Mark Kelly said his constituents "want more border patrol, they want more border investments and enforcement. . . and they also want immigration reform."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) voted no, saying the law won't incarcerate and deport only dangerous people. Anyone who comes to the attention of police who is here illegally is subject to incarceration and deportation. She said:
If someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court.That is what is in this bill, a fundamental suspension of a core American value.
The other U.S. representative from a swing district in Oregon, Val Hoyle, ended up voting against the bill, saying:
This was a tough vote. No one is above the law, and anyone guilty of a crime should be held accountable. We can all agree on that, and I hate that Republicans want to create the appearance that that isn’t universally accepted. Unfortunately, the Senate didn’t make the changes to the bill I had hoped for, and I cannot support it in its final form.
The Laken Riley Act will be a mixed blessing for Republicans. It was intended to be a wedge issue, with Democrats in opposition looking like they are soft on murders by undocumented people. But the practical result is that the law will require mass incarceration of people who are here illegally. Voters think they want this, and they voted for it, including in majority-Hispanic areas.
The reality will be expensive and chaotic. The American Immigration Council estimated it could cost $88 billion to deport one million people a year under current immigration law. The U.S. lacks the capacity to carry out the law. There is no space for the detention and the law will require ICE to process the easiest to find, not the most dangerous, people. And the public will discover that people who are being deported are family members, friends, and essential employees. That is what they voted for. They won't like it.
We have come to this because there is no consensus on comprehensive immigration policy. In its absence, Democrats let a problem at the southern border get out of hand and were slow to address it. Their "compassion" planted the seeds for this response. The long-unaddressed mess created a tidal wave of public frustration, and vulnerable Democrats are getting out of the way of it.
I did not vote for Janelle Bynum in the last Democratic Primary. This was the district in which I resided. She is a nice person, and broadly liberal on several issues. But she is a progressive who vacillates on important progressive issues.
Of course there are undocumented residents in this country who are criminals ... many of them are not brown-skinned, however; a thing often lost in the xenophobic paranoia that has infected our national character. A person convicted of a capital offense (and other serious crimes) should be deported. After conviction. We are a country of law, and due process is afforded to everyone accused of criminal activity (which includes the 1500 J6 convictees recently pardoned by DT). People cannot be rounded up and put into detention on the mere suspicion they committed a serious crime without the promise of due promise ... especially when camps are erected to stockpile all the suspects. They certainly cannot be deported on mere suspicion ... and this administration is rapidly moving towards requiring people to "report" their suspicions
In the high profile raids ICE has already conducted (in New Jersey and in California's Central Valley), several CITIZENS have been arrested and detained on mere suspicion and/or common association. The head of the Navajo Nation just issued a warning to all Dine in the country to carry some form of identification, because officious, intolerant and (quite frankly) criminal ICE agents are not showing much discrimination when arresting brown people.
Lastly ... Laken Riley is but ONE individual tragically harmed in a sea of millions who have not, by one individual out of a sea of people like him who have committed no crime. Why aren't you calling out the hypocrisy of this law? Republicans (all) and frightened Democrats voted to "get even," but ignore the criminality of the man just elected as president (who at least was given due process in two trials, and offered same in two others ... which he refused and manipulated his cronies to wave away), the 1500 violent criminals to whom he just gave a get out of jail free card, and which many of his appointees share?
Peter appears to be suggesting a trade-off here, but it’s unclear to me what he thinks it will accomplish. He seems to be saying that, because the Democrats, i.e., the Biden administration, “…let a problem at the southern border get out of hand and were slow to address it” that our government should deport any undocumented person who is accused of committing a crime without first providing legal due process. For me, this will not be unlike our government detaining Japanese Americans without providing due process during WW II. I like Janelle Bynum, but I’m with AOC on this one.