Democratic Senator from Arizona Ruben Gallego anticipated his willingness to back Republican-led initiatives if he believes his constituency will support it. The first such case is the Laken Riley Act, which allows ICE to detain and deport noncitizens charged with certain crimes like burglary and theft. He was one of 12 Democrats supporting the bill.
Speaking to POLITICO, Gallego backed his stance by saying he is "bringing the perspective of working class Latinos from Arizona," something that in his opinion has been missing from the Democratic party and is a reason for the party's broad loss in the 2024 election.
"There has been this misunderstanding about where Latinos are when it comes to border and border security," Gallego said. "I'm here to bring some more real truth about what people are thinking ... and so people here and senators here aren't necessarily reliant on these immigration groups that are, I think, a lot of times, largely out of touch with where your average Latino is."
Gallego went on to speak about the broader stance of "some Democrats," which he described as one with no limits "on people crossing the border, that there shouldn't be deportations, that there shouldn't be restrictions for people that are causing problems, like the monster that killed Laken Riley."
Opponents of the bill, including civil rights groups, warn that it could lead to the detention of individuals based on accusations alone, bypassing judicial discretion and due process.
Anna Cabot, director of the University of Houston Law Center's Immigration Clinic told The Latin Times in a recent piece that the act "would require detention without a chance of bond for people who have merely been charged or arrested with these crimes or even 'who admits to having committed these crimes", making the opportunity ripe for "exacerbating the consequences of already extreme racial disparities in criminal arrests in the US."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) estimates that implementing the Laken Riley Act would cost close to $27 billion annually and would require a massive expansion of resources, including over 10,000 new agents, 7,000 attorneys, and 110,000 additional detention beds.
The new data, which comes from an internal ICE document obtained and verified by NPR, shatters estimates reported earlier this month, which had placed the cost around $3.2 billion in additional funding for fiscal year 2025.
The document notes that a figure of $3.2 billion "has been shared widely as a cost estimate" but that number is incorrect because it "does not represent the full cost of implementation," explains the NPR report, citing ICE sources.
ICE, however, has raised concerns about the feasibility of enforcing the law. Besides the fact that the projected cost far exceed the agency's current $9 billion annual budget, detention capacity poses another challenge as it currently has funding for 41,500 detention beds. Additionally, ICE's existing workforce of approximately 6,000 enforcement and removal officers would need to more than double to handle the projected caseload.
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