'Serious constitutional concerns': Dems back GOP bill that could trigger 'diplomatic crises'

10 January

All but nine Senate Democrats recently joined all Senate Republicans to push a new immigration bill forward for further debate. Should it pass, experts are warning that it could cause a major blow to international diplomacy.

In a Friday essay for Slate, legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern argued that the Laken Riley Act — which the House of Representatives has already passed — goes much further than its stated goal of allowing the government to detain undocumented immigrants accused of crimes. Stern called that a "gross mischaracterization" of the bill, and asserted that the "sweeping changes" in the legislation would create "serious constitutional concerns."

"It would penalize immigrants who live and work in the U.S. legally, subjecting them to indefinite detention without being convicted or even charged with a crime. And it would transfer a massive amount of power to state attorneys general and district court judges, who could effectively wrest control over immigration enforcement from the executive branch," Stern wrote. "These judges could, upon a state’s request, ban the issuance of allvisas to residents of entire countries like India."

"Under the Laken Riley Act, courts could prevent every resident of these countries from obtaining a visa," he added. "That includes visas for skilled workers, students, medical treatment, business travel—all of it would be shut down, likely setting off diplomatic crises that the president would have little leeway to resolve."

And as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick recently told New Republic writer Greg Sargent, the Laken Riley Act would transfer significant power to far-right state attorneys general that previously belonged to the federal government. He pointed out that under the bill's language, a Republican attorney general could theoretically "block a Democratic president’s grant of parole to migrants fleeing the war in Ukraine."

“Imagine Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton bringing a lawsuit seeking to end all H1-B visas from India and China because those countries refuse to accept deportations of those nationals living in Texas,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “This could allow any state A.G. to threaten an international incident.”

The Senate is likely to vote on the Laken Riley Act next week, and it could end up being one of the first bills President-elect Donald Trump signs into law when he's sworn in on January 20. The nine Senate Democrats who voted against advancing the bill are Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Click here to read Stern's essay in Slate, and click here to read Sargent's article in the New Republic (subscription required).

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