Last week, President Donald Trump signed a law passed by Congress that allows federal agents to seize and indefinitely detain immigrants who are accused of crimes as minor as petty theft. Yet New York City officials, and the agencies whose job it is to protect the city's 500,000 undocumented immigrants, are silent about how New York's criminal justice system will interpret and react to the new law—just as the NYPD gears up to unleash another crackdown on low-level offenses.
The Laken Riley Act would subject many of the city's undocumented population to indefinite and mandatory detention if they're simply accused by law enforcement of crimes like burglary and minor theft. It also contains no carveout for children.
"You can imagine a child taking a candy bar from a store, and if that child is charged with shoplifting, they're subject to mandatory detention," Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told Hell Gate. "Similarly, a mom with a baby who leaves a store with a package of diapers and is arrested and charged would be subject to mandatory detention. The law is just really, really harsh."