Georgia Lawmaker Aims to Set Record Strait on ‘Criminal Alien’ Bill

The Georgia House has handed a invoice geared toward cracking down on illegal aliens who’ve dedicated crimes within the state. But the invoice’s passage has introduced with it claims that the laws requires police to arrest “immigrants” and that it perpetuates dangerous stereotypes about them.

“Georgia House passes bill requiring police to help arrest immigrants after student’s killing,” The Associated Press originally reported on Feb. 29. The piece’s headline was later corrected to learn, “Georgia House passes bill requiring jailers to identify and hold immigrants after student’s killing.” 

Claims have additionally been made that the invoice would “violate constitutional freedoms, ignore the needs of local communities, and perpetuate harmful stereotypes about Latinos and immigrants,” in accordance to an announcement from the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials reported on by Fox 5 Atlanta.  

Georgia Republican state Rep. Jesse Petrea sponsored the invoice and has sought to set the file straight as to what the laws does and doesn’t do.  

“The media inaccuracy to date has been to suggest the bill speaks to broader policing and arrests outside of jails,” Petrea advised The Daily Signal in an electronic mail, including, “That’s not the case.”  

“The bill requires that when a criminal is jailed for a crime in Georgia and determined to be illegally in the country, they must be reported to federal immigration authorities,” the state lawmaker defined. “If not, the sheriff/ jailer will have committed a misdemeanor.” 

Once Immigration and Customs Enforcement is notified and if the company requests the sheriff or jailer to maintain the unlawful alien, then the detainer “must be honored,” Petrea stated. “Those are 48-hour holds,” he added.  

Petrea additionally made it clear that the invoice was not launched due to Laken Riley’s homicide in February. The bill was first drafted a few 12 months in the past and launched within the Georgia House in January, in accordance to the lawmaker.

Riley, a University of Georgia nursing pupil, was murdered on Feb. 22 whereas out for a jog on her school campus. Jose Ibarra, an unlawful alien from Venezuela, is the lead suspect in Riley’s homicide. Ibarra was beforehand arrested in New York in 2023 on prices of kid endangerment however was launched earlier than U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might ask native legislation enforcement to maintain him. 

Riley’s homicide thrust the Georgia invoice, referred to as the “The Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act,” into the highlight.  

A cautious learn of the textual content of the 10-page invoice confirms that jailers should not allowed to maintain an illegal alien until the Department of Homeland Security’s Law Enforcement Support Center or ICE “specifically provides written instructions for detaining such inmate as an illegal alien.”  

“This bill just ends any ‘sanctuary’ policies in Georgia and simply requires local law enforcement to report whether the people they have arrested, or have in custody, are American citizens or aliens,” Simon Hankinson, a senior analysis fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, advised The Daily Signal. (The Daily Signal is the information outlet of Heritage.)  

The invoice is now into account within the Georgia Senate.  

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