An immigration bill passed in the Georgia House in the emotional aftermath of a nursing student’s violent death in Athens is causing consternation among the state’s Hispanic community, with advocacy groups warning of racial profiling and of potentially dangerous repercussions on Latino residents.
Passed mostly along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed, House Bill 1105 would permit police to arrest, with probable cause, anyone who is suspected of being in the country illegally and detain them for deportation.
It’s a bill that seeks to target immigrants like Jose Antonio Ibarra, the suspect charged in the killing of student Laken Riley on the University of Georgia campus. Federal immigration authorities say Ibarra, a Venezuelan national, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization in 2022.
“While we continue to pray for Laken Riley and her family, the Georgia House took action … to strengthen public safety and security in our state, stand firmly against illegal immigration and for the rule of law — and I am proud of the passage of House Bill 1105,” said House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican from Newington in a statement.
Now headed for further deliberation in the Senate, the legislation would also require jailers and sheriffs to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when someone in custody lacks legal documentation. Failure to do so could result in local governments losing state funding or state-administered federal funding and sheriffs who neglect to check immigration status could be guilty of a misdemeanor. Lastly, jails would have to collect and share data about the immigration background of their inmate populations.
Currently, local authorities aren’t required to work with ICE to the extent that would be mandated by HB1105.
Athens-Clarke authorities, for instance, say they check the criminal history of people in custody and keep people detained with outstanding warrants, but they don’t jail immigrants in the country illegally if they have no other criminal history.
Adelina Nicholls has spent decades at the helm of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR).
On social media, she described HB 1105 as an example of election year politicking, with legislators using the Latino and immigrant community “as a piñata” to raise their profile.
Adopting the bill would “expand immigration detention and keep more of our community members in jail,” she said in a statement. “This bill is an example of [a] racist and anti-immigrant agenda.”
Earlier this month, GLAHR launched an online petition in collaboration with Project South, an Atlanta advocacy group, to push for the halting of HB 1105′s progress through the Legislature. The text of the petition, which has garnered roughly 5,000 signatories so far, says Georgia elected officials “are using the tragic murder of a nursing student to push anti-immigrant legislation.”
In a statement, Project South attorney Priyanka Bhatt described HB 1105 as a “draconian bill” that would “further advance dangerous anti-immigrant rhetoric and create a hostile environment for all communities of color.”
Passage of HB 1105 would align Georgia with states known for more aggressive immigration enforcement including Texas, which approved a law in December to allow its police officers to arrest migrants who enter the state illegally.
Requiring local Georgia authorities to closely collaborate with ICE would reverse recent decisions made at the county level in metro Atlanta to scale back immigration enforcement.
In 2021, newly elected sheriffs in Gwinnett and Cobb counties ended their departments’ participation in an ICE program known as 287(g), which deputizes local law enforcement to act as immigration agents.
Under 287(g), local jail officials systemically checked the immigration status of individuals arrested for a variety of crimes — including minor traffic violations — and shared that information with immigration officials to initiate deportation proceedings. In 2019 and 2020, the Gwinnett and Cobb county jails accounted for more contacts with ICE through 287(g) than anywhere else in the country, according to ICE data.
The sheriffs’ decision to withdraw from 287(g) came on the heels of sustained activism from local immigrant groups like GLAHR, which has fought the program since it arrived in metro Atlanta in 2007.
At the time, advocates argued that linking police to immigration enforcement made communities less safe, because it made immigrants less likely to report crimes or collaborate with investigative work.
They are making the same argument now.
“There’s no doubt that (HB 1105) will create a big rift between police and immigrant communities,” said Santiago Marquez, CEO of the Latin American Association in Brookhaven. Crime will go underreported, he warned, “letting harmful felons go free and those felons can hurt anyone at any time.”
Gigi Pedraza, executive director of the Atlanta-based Latino Community Fund said in a statement that Georgia “has been in mourning after the tragic death of Ms. Laken Riley.”
“We welcome discussions on bills that would help end violence against women and keep all of us who live in this state safe, unfortunately HB 1105 does not do that.”
In her social media address, Nicholls vowed “resistance” in the face of legislative efforts to identify and detain undocumented immigrants. “We are here to stay,” she said.
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