(The Center Square) – North Carolina Congressman Dan Bishop delivered an impassioned voice from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives prior to passage of the Laken Riley Act on Thursday.
It strategically came just hours before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address to the nation. Bishop said, “It’s far past the time for President Biden to act. He will not act.”
Riley is the Georgia woman killed by a suspect prosecutors say came to America from Venezuela, believed to have crossed the southern U.S. border.
Formally known as House Resolution 7511 and sponsored by Georgia Republican Mike Collins, the legislation would require detainment of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft. It gives states the ability to sue the federal government if they prove harm from immigrants who have come through unlawful entry.
The bill passed 251-170 in a chamber numbering 219 Republicans, 213 Democrats and with three vacancies. Thirty-seven Democrats – North Carolinians Don Davis and Jeff Jackson included – voted for it, though the Democratic majority Senate is unlikely to take up the measure.
Riley, 22, was an Augusta University student in Georgia who was killed while out for a routine morning run. Jose Ibarra is charged with murder and assault in the case and is yet to enter a plea.
There is question of whether he was arrested in August in New York for acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, says he was released before agents could question him; New York officials say they have no record of such an arrest.
In the just under three minutes he spoke, Bishop said, “HR7511 is the latest effort by Republicans to do something about the harm that confronts our nation from an uncontrolled border by the determined action of President Biden and Democrats. HR2 is an extensive bill with many provisions and extensive reform and Democrats have ignored it. This bill is exceedingly simple and straightforward. Democrats have attacked it.
“The excuses for doing nothing never end. The only answers offered by Democrats are to spend more money, processing more aliens faster into the country making the problem worse, and yet they always deflect blame to someone else for the calamitous results of their policies.”
Six executive orders on his first day in office enabled Biden to reverse orders by former President Donald Trump. Undocumented immigration was put back into the Census; legal protections for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program was strengthened; what was known as the “Muslim ban” was ended; the expanded interior enforcement work of immigration officials was halted; the building of a wall at the Mexico border stopped; and deportation protections for Liberians were extended.
More related to immigration followed.
Since then, the White House, through its main spokeswomen, repeatedly said there are no problems at the border and that it is not open. More recently, the White House says it is the fault of Republicans and legislation that did not pass, causing what is happening at the border.
The Center Square reporting, combined with government records, puts the estimate at about 11 million people who are living in or have entered the country illegally since Inauguration Day for Biden.
Bishop said the Laken Riley Act is straightforward.
“The objection that a thief should not be deported until after a conviction leaves Americans to be victimized for all the time that would happened until a conviction,” he said. “It is not required under the law. The distinction between the point the gentleman from New York made about Mr. Massey’s bill concerning the use of facial recognition technology that’s about American citizens. The people involved here have no right to be in this country. They’re not supposed to be here.”
Bishop said the objection to the standing change, “that the conferral of standing on state attorney general is unconstitutional and will not work,” is already addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“It is Justice Cavanaugh, and the opinion of the court in United States versus Texas who said, ‘For example, Congress might specifically authorize suits against the Executive Branch by a defined set of plaintiffs who have suffered concrete harm from executive underenforcement, and specifically authorized the judiciary to enter appropriate orders requiring additional arrests or prosecutions by the Executive Branch.'”
“This bill,” Bishop said in conclusion, “takes that invitation from the court to act. It’s far past the time for President Biden to act. He will not act. Let’s act in this United States Congress. We have the chance to give states the ability to fight back. We have the chance to recognize Laken Riley’s story as a tragedy. There need not be other tragedies.”
