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lawyers committe for civil rights
Trump Signs Sweeping Xenophobic Bill, Rescinding Due Process for Millions
"The Laken Riley Act capitalizes on a horrible tragedy in order to advance President Trump's anti-immigrant agenda by scapegoating people seeking safety," said one campaigner.
Jan 29, 2025
Human rights defenders decried U.S. President Donald Trump's signing of legislation Wednesday that critics warn will strip due process rights from millions of people while harming some of the most vulnerable members of society, including migrant children, victims of sexual violence, and survivors of domestic abuse.
Trump signed the Laken Riley Act—named after a young woman murdered last year by a Venezuelan man who, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), entered the United States illegally—calling it a "landmark law" that "will save countless innocent American lives."
"The Laken Riley Act is based upon false, xenophobic narratives that dehumanize and criminalize an entire group of people due to the actions of one person."
However, Amy Fischer, director of the ACLU's Refugee and Migrant Rights Program, said in a statement Wednesday that "the Laken Riley Act capitalizes on a horrible tragedy in order to advance President Trump's anti-immigrant agenda by scapegoating people seeking safety and stripping away their right to due process."
"This legislation mandates the arrest and detention of our undocumented neighbors for being convicted or charged of any theft, shoplifting, burglary, or larceny offense," Fischer noted. "Mandatory detention solely for being accused of theft strips people of their right to due process and constitutes arbitrary detention under international human rights law."
"The Laken Riley Act is based upon false, xenophobic narratives that dehumanize and criminalize an entire group of people due to the actions of one person," Fischer added. "It will separate families and make our communities less safe. It is simply unconscionable for Congress to create a new mechanism that gives people the power to falsely accuse immigrants of theft knowing their detention is mandatory."
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As the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the Bay Area, which called the law "shameful and unconstitutional," noted Wednesday: "This bill does not require a conviction—simply being accused of a crime is enough to force individuals into mandatory detention without review by any judge. In doing so, the law strips due process protections and allows for discrimination against vulnerable immigrant communities."
The group continued:
The federal government already has the power to detain and deport individuals who commit criminal acts. But in our legal system, judges act as a constitutionally required check on police actions. This new law removes that check. It is a direct attack on the constitutional rights of immigrants and communities of color, and it erodes the civil liberties of American society at large. It will incentivize racial profiling and divert law enforcement resources away from real threats, making our communities less safe.
"Lawyers' Committee and our partners vow to challenge this unconstitutional law in court," Bianca Sierra Wolff, the group's executive director, said in a statement. "We will not stand by while the rights of immigrants and communities of color are trampled for political gain."
Writing for Common Dreams Wednesday, National Center for Youth Law senior director Neha Desai and NCYL attorney Melissa Adamson lamented the Laken Riley Act's passage and urged Congress, both chambers of which passed the law with bipartisan support, to "do the right thing" by introducing "new legislation to protect children from this draconian law."
"Policymakers on both sides of the political aisle seem all too eager to support legislation that ignores that immigrant children are human beings, worthy of the same care and protections that their own children enjoy," Desai and Adamson contended. "It is deeply disheartening to see lawmakers shift with the political winds rather than hold true to fundamental values. Congress must not acquiesce to a country in which the rejection of children's rights is the norm."
Shares in private prison companies have skyrocketed since Trump won last November's election, partly in anticipation of a boom in business due to the Laken Riley Act and the broader campaign of mass deportations now underway.
On Wednesday, Trump also said he would instruct the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to prepare a detention facility—some critics called it a "concentration camp"—capable of holding 30,000 migrants at the notorious offshore Guantánamo Bay prison run by the U.S. military in Cuba.
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We Must Stand Up to Hate Masquerading as Vandalism
Why local officials must investigate and prosecute every act of white-supremacist vandalism and keep this movement from growing further.
Mar 02, 2023
When self-proclaimed white nationalists spray painted over a mural of Arthur Ashe in Richmond, Va., in the fall of 2021, it wasn’t just another act of vandalism. It was an American-born form of terrorism that needs to be put down before it spreads to your community.
The stenciled slogans that covered Ashe’s face were meant to intimidate the historically Black neighborhood surrounding Battery Park, and they did. Some residents stopped using the popular park altogether. Others removed Black Lives Matter signs from their lawns or windows. The neighborhood was nervous. No one wanted to become the next target.
That was and is the point of the “vandalism”: to instill panic, to cow people into silence, and to make the perpetrators’ hate more widely known. Missouri, Vermont, Idaho, and several other states have all had similar fliers, stickers and stencils show up in their communities.
The group behind them is known as the Patriot Front, which so far has mostly targeted locations and businesses frequented by people of color and the LGBTQ community. And by and large it has gotten away with it.
Not anymore. Two brave Richmond residents have decided to stand up and hold the group accountable in court. If federal, state, or local governments can’t or won’t do anything, if graffiti seems too inconsequential for them to pursue, the victims and targets of these acts will have to do it themselves.
Each insignia stenciled without a fight, each obnoxious claim tacked to a telephone pole, makes the next one more likely, and the one after that, until an entire community is subdued, and the perpetrators have gained in strength and power.
Some background: Headquartered in Texas and spun off from a group known as Vanguard America following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the Patriot Front maintains its white members are descended from America’s conquerors, who left the country to them (and only them). Apparently, their birthright is to be our betters.
As ridiculous as their beliefs sound, the chaos they cause is no laughing matter. That’s why we must not write Richmond off as one park or one isolated act of property defacement. We have to take it seriously each time the Patriot Front strikes.
Each insignia stenciled without a fight, each obnoxious claim tacked to a telephone pole, makes the next one more likely, and the one after that, until an entire community is subdued, and the perpetrators have gained in strength and power.
Their methods may seem desperate and crazy, but that doesn’t mean they’re benign or ineffective. The number of hate-motivated crimes — against people of color, Jewish people, LGBTQ people, and too many others — are on the rise, according to organizations that track them. We cannot allow this hate to continue to metastasize.
While extremist groups — white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, whatever they’re calling themselves — may appear to us to be fools, they aren’t stupid. They are sowing chaos and rarely facing consequences. And their numbers are growing because of it.. This is where civil lawsuits come in.
The Patriot Front appears to know exactly what it’s doing - and not doing. By attacking property and buildings rather than people, the Patriot Front makes it harder to hold either its leadership or members criminally accountable. They are betting that their “vandalism” is not worth the time and effort it would take to investigate and prosecute. And they’re relying on their group’s broad reach, reputation for violence and intimidation, and covert nature to dissuade private citizens from doing anything about it..
That leaves us with civil litigation. It’s essential that the Patriot Front and its members face financial consequences for the harm they impose.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law recently fired the first salvo in this counterattack. Working with two prominent law firms, the group filed suit on behalf of two Richmond residents against 23 members of the Patriot Front, from its leader on down to the taggers. The plaintiffs felt the fear the Patriot Front wanted them to feel and experienced a real sense of loss as a result—and they are willing to fight back.
The Lawyers’ Committee lawsuit against the Patriot Front invokes the KKK Act of 1871 — a fitting means for repulsing a group hellbent on terrifying diverse people and communities. But it also draws on other arguments about the spread of fear and how a couple of masked terrorists holding spray cans can cut a community off from a beloved park, how stencils on a wall can signal to locals that they aren’t safe anymore.
While the Richmond lawsuit is an important first step, it must not be the last. Attorneys and law firms need to step in to protect people and communities across the country. These cases require time and resources — including security measures to protect brave plaintiffs — that individuals often lack.
But private citizens and private attorneys alone are not enough. Governments at every level need to recognize the threat Patriot Front—and similar white nationalist groups—pose to their communities. They need to investigate and prosecute every act of white-supremacist vandalism and keep this movement from growing further. Policymakers need to act as well. Private plaintiffs brave enough to step forward need more apt tools designed to combat modern terror groups.
We know this is how hate begins. These steps are how we ensure it ends.Keep ReadingShow Less
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