On Day One of the fascist regime, the U.S. Senate considered and rejected an amendment from Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware that would have struck the section of the Laken Riley Act “that authorizes State attorneys general to sue Federal immigration authorities for alleged violations relating to the detention of aliens.” It then passed the bill in a 64-35 bipartisan vote. Every Democratic senator (except Ron Wyden of Oregon, who didn’t vote) supported Coons’s amendment, but despite its failure, 12 Democrats supported the bill anyway. This included both Democratic senators from Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and New Hampshire. It also included John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Mark Warner of Virginia.

Even if the Coons amendment had passed, this wasn’t a good bill. The official description of the Laken Riley Act, which I wrote about here, requires “the Secretary of Homeland Security to “take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes.” The actual language is a little clearer. It requires the federal detention of any undocumented person who:

“(ii) is charged with, is arrested for, is convicted of, admits having committed, or admits committing acts which constitute the essential elements of any burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, or assault of a law enforcement officer offense, or any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury to another person,”;

It doesn’t require that an arrest is made or a charge filed, if someone is said to have confessed. There’s no provision for denying having confessed. If someone is arrested for, say, shoplifting, it doesn’t matter whether a grand jury follows that up by authorizing a charge. Obviously, there’s no right to trial or need for a conviction.

Let me tell you a story to demonstrate why this is so problematic.

In 1990, three years after I graduated from Princeton High School, the head of the language department, Manuel Morales,  was arrested an accused of coercing a male student into sex acts over a three year period. Even though I was then living in California, the news got back to me and I was shocked. The story I was told was that either the student or his parents were undocumented, and Morales used this fact as blackmail. In the end, Morales convinced a jury that the relationship was consensual and was allowed to keep his $17,ooo/yr. pension. He told a reporter he was going to retire to Mexico or Puerto Rico.

I don’t know why even a consensual relationship with a student didn’t result in criminal penalties, and I have no idea if Morales was truly falsely accused or not. But the accusation seemed credible because being subject to deportation gives other people leverage to coerce you. With the passage of the Laken-Riley Act, the opportunities to use this kind of leverage against families with undocumented members is greatly expanded. I can threaten to report someone to the police for theft and demand money, sex, a job, or other favors. If they don’t meet my demand and are arrested on the basis of my false accusation, they will face deportation with no avenue of appeal. Even American citizens can be blackmailed in this way to protect a mother, father or other family member who lacks documentation.

Think of the leverage this gives to police to engage in coercion. They can elicit not only money and sex, but false testimony. The problem here isn’t just the rights of people who are not in the county legally. Maybe you don’t think they should have many rights. But this law creates incentives and opportunities to prey on the vulnerable, whether they are non-citizens or merely people who want to protect non-citizen members of their family. A law that incentivizes coercion, blackmail and corruption is a poorly designed law. A law that undermines the integrity of the legal system by incentivizing false testimony is not a good law.

And then there is the problem that Sen. Coons was trying to solve. He wanted to strike out the following section from the law:

“(3) ENFORCEMENT BY ATTORNEY GENERAL OF A STATE.—The attorney general of a State, or other authorized State officer, alleging a violation of the detention and removal requirements under paragraph (1) or (2) that harms such State or its residents shall have standing to bring an action against the Secretary of Homeland Security on behalf of such State or the residents of such State in an appropriate district court of the United States to obtain appropriate injunctive relief. The court shall advance on the docket and expedite the disposition of a civil action filed under this paragraph to the greatest extent practicable. For purposes of this paragraph, a State or its residents shall be considered to have been harmed if the State or its residents experience harm, including financial harm in excess of $100.”.

Basically, this gives the country’s attorneys general the right to make a federal civil case against the executive branch of the government for the theft of one hundred bucks. It’s a way of compelling the Department of Homeland Security not to grant visas or parole or release to any category of undocumented people. This is a bit of a problem when there is a backlog of over 3.5 million immigration cases to adjudicate. You can’t hold millions of people in detention, nor magically teleport them to other countries. But once people are released into the country, the states can now sue the Feds. It’s going to create a nightmare for the Executive Branch and for the federal courts. It’s just badly designed legislation, and the Democrats were correct to try to strip this out.

But, on Day One of the fascist regime, this law was passed in the U.S. Senate and it will soon be on the Rapist-in-Chief’s desk awaiting his signature.