Please use this form to contact your senators to prevent the passage of the bill known as the “Laken Riley Act.”  

On January 7, the House of Representatives passed the Laken Riley Act, H.R. 29. Soon, it will likely go to a vote in the Senate. If this bill passes, it would:  

• Require mandatory detention of certain noncitizens, including any undocumented person or DACA recipient, arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting-related offenses, even if they are never charged with a crime.  

• Give state attorneys general, including notoriously anti-immigrant ones from states like Texas and Louisiana, the power to dictate immigration policy at the federal level and on the international stage.  

Please contact your senators using this form to urge them not to pass this bill.  

This bill would result in mandatory detention for individuals arrested for certain crimes including petty crimes such as shoplifting even if no criminal charges were ever brought. Even a simple arrest without any further prosecution could lead to the indefinite incarceration of certain noncitizens, including undocumented people and DACA recipients.  

Additionally, this bill would authorize states to seek federal court orders forcing the executive branch to detain and deport specific people, overturn individual humanitarian parole decisions, and cease issuing visas to entire countries.   

For example, the bill includes a provision authorizing state lawsuits to seek sweeping visa bans on so-called “recalcitrant countries”—countries that decline to accept their citizens back when removed from the U.S.  

The provisions in this bill violate basic tenets of the Constitution and threaten to upend our immigration legal system, with potential impacts reaching from the local to the international level.  

Please contact your senators now using this form and ask them to reject this dangerous bill.