Georgia House OKs bill to require jailers to work with ICE in wake of killing of Athens student

Savannah GOP Rep. Jesse Petrea filed the bill in January, but the recent killing of Laken Riley who was allegedly killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, who entered the country illegally, gave the bill and the larger conversations around immigration new momentum. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Legislation that gained momentum in the wake of last week’s killing of Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley to penalize law enforcement agencies that refuse to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pushed through the Georgia House on Crossover Day.

House Bill 1105 requires local law enforcement agencies to work in tandem with federal officials to detain arrestees suspected of being in the country illegally. Under the proposal, if an undocumented immigrant is in the county jail and is found to be in the United States illegally, the jailer must report the arrest to ICE.

Savannah Republican Rep. Jesse Petrea had been pushing such legislation for a year. He filed the bill in January, but the recent killing of Riley and authorities’ arrest in connection with the homicide of Jose Antonio Ibarra, who allegedly entered the country illegally, gave the bill and the larger conversations around immigration new momentum.

Petrea said the bill would narrowly focus on people in the U.S. without authorization and who are in the criminal justice system. The bill would also withhold funding from local law enforcement if the agency doesn’t comply with the process. If an officer refuses to enforce these policies, they could be charged with a misdemeanor for the first offense, and a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature for the second offense.

Georgia Republican lawmakers claim that law enforcement agencies that do not work with ICE policies allowed Ibarra to slip through the cracks. Athens Republican Rep. Houston Gaines said that so-called sanctuary city policies, which he says are similar to the ones Athens has, would be outlawed with this bill. Athens, where the homicide took place, chose not to hold undocumented immigrants charged with crimes for an extra 48 hours unless a judge ordered it, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 

Democrats disagree.

“We have had enough of attempts to promote racial profiling and discrimination,” said Duluth Democrat Rep. Pedro Marin.

Multiple House Democrats, most of them people of color, emphasized that the bill would increase racial profiling in their communities. 

Rep. Ruwa Romman. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

“There are so many people both in this body and outside of this body who would be suspected as foreign nationals and would be unfairly detained until it was proven they were citizens,” said Duluth Democrat Rep. Ruwa Romman. 

The GALEO Impact Fund, an organization focused on Hispanic and Latino representation in public office, condemned the bill in a press release Wednesday for shifting “the blame away from the culprit himself and onto the entire immigrant community.” The advocacy group echoed some of the similar criticisms of policies unfairly targeting the Hispanic community. 

Democrats also had a problem with the logistics of the bill. Atlanta Democrat Rep. Stacey Evans said that it would overload law enforcement with sorting out which crimes get processed. Agencies would also have to publish a quarterly report on a public website detailing the number of immigration detainers issued by ICE for inmates at the jail or other information. Evans said that their time would be split between chasing crime on the street and detaining migrants.

“If local law enforcement wants to focus on crime as a whole as opposed to further detaining migrants, I don’t have a problem with that. And I don’t think anybody in here should,” said Evans.

Rep Esther Panitch. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Sandy Springs Democrat Rep. Esther Panitch said a lack of funding would hamper efforts to detain undocumented  immigrants by law enforcement agencies. 

The bill was approved in a vote nearly along party lines. It got the approval of the House Speaker’s office in a press release and it now goes to the Senate. 

“While we continue to pray for Laken Riley and her family, the Georgia House took action today 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,” House Speaker Jon Burns, a Newington Republican, said in the statement. 

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