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.
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| U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-OR) |
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.
4 comments:
In the late 1980s I had an angry mentally ill inmate incarcerated for misdemeanor assault who was an illegal alien from Mexico. He required a great deal of staff attention that eventually did get sent back to Mexico and I remember be thankful that he was sent back fairly quickly. We did deport illegal aliens if they were violent, at least from Alaska.
“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.”
Democrats are hardly the only culprits. Trump refused to sign a bipartisan immigration bill in 2018. Then again, less than a year ago, he killed another one by ordering Republicans not to vote for it. The notion that Democrats are at fault simply shows how much louder the Republican noise machine is.
As for Rep. Hoyle’s comment, the belief that “no one is above the law and anyone guilty of a crime should be held accountable” is in fact NOT universally accepted. Republicans do not accept that Trump and his co-conspirators should be held accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 election or for attacking the Capitol.
It is going to be interesting to see what lesson the Democrats draw from their recent catastrophic defeat. Here’s hoping they come up with something sensible. 🤞
Apparently, we have very short memories of an immigration bill passed in the Senate and sent to the House for a vote. Killed by Donald J Trump with a call to Mike Johnson to kill the bill. Let us face the facts that immigrants crossing the borders illegally are handy workers to employers seeking to employ them without having to pay a fair wage and working them inhumanely.
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