Republicans in Congress got what they sought in the Laken Riley Act, which was a headline in the New York Times saying “House Passes Bill to Deport Immigrants Convicted of Violence Against Women.”
The headlines implies that the law applies to all immigrants. It applies only to persons not authorized to be the country. These persons have always been subject to deportation. The Biden, Trump and Obama administrations all deported hundreds of thousands of persons annually.
Most deportees had committed a crime, but most of the crimes committed were not crimes committed against persons or property. Rather, they were Illegal entry or reentry, unauthorized work, false claims of U.S. citizenship, and the like.
The headline also implies that the law is especially designed to protect women from violence. The law does not do that. The past administrations have clearly made a priority of detaining and deporting unauthorized persons who committed any serious crime. This priority was specified in written high-level guidance for years. What this law does is in effect to broaden the range of illegal offences to as low as shoplifting, to mandate detention if is the person is accused of such an act, and to authorize state Attorneys General to have standing in suits that can halt all immigration from a specified country
The incoming Trump administration is trying to create the illusion of a vast population of unauthorized persons who committed some kind of infraction, however trivial, and to lump them together with convicted criminals against property and persons.