Originally published on January 24. 

Updated January 30. 

Donald Trump has signed the Laken Riley Act into law, making it the first of his second term. During the signing, Trump also announced his intentions to authorize ICE to detain migrants at Guantanamo Bay, where he claimed there are “30,000 beds to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised the decision on Fox News, referring to it as a humane option to manage deportations. But according to Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, “The facility is decrepit. It’s been falling apart. It’s in disrepair…And, as a practical matter, the conditions that would be created if people went there would be so substandard that it would give people opportunities to file lawsuits around the conditions of their confinement while they’re being deported.”

Congress passed the Laken Riley Act just last week. Named for a young woman in Georgia who was killed by a Venezuelan undocumented immigrant, it was slated to be among the first laws passed by Trump’s administration (although his hand must be tired from the other stuff he’s been signing) and it is ominously fitting that the first piece of legislation he executes is an anti-immigration bill.

So what’s in it? The top line item is that any undocumented immigrant accused of non-violent crimes like theft, either in the U.S. or their home country, will now be subject to mandatory indefinite detention by ICE. They will not be allowed bond hearings in their criminal case and, once in ICE custody, can be held until deportation, which will be the most likely outcome if they’re unable to leave the detention center for preliminary trial hearings. The bill also allows for state attorneys general to sue the federal government on behalf of residents who believe they’ve been harmed by immigration policies.

To be clear, there are already policies in place for detaining and deporting convicted violent offenders. But this bill expands those policies to include anyone arrested or charged with “theft, larceny, burglary, shoplifting” or assault against a law enforcement officer, regardless of any conviction or lack thereof. “What’s dangerous about this bill is that it takes away some of the basic fundamental due process tenets of our legal system,” one legal expert told NPR. 

This bill is a direct response to the particulars of Laken Riley’s case: The man who murdered her had previously been charged with shoplifting, and supporters of the bill argue that had he been deported after that minor crime, Laken Riley would still be alive. That is possible—but overriding the Fifth Amendment for a vast number of people is not a sensible way to protect women from being murdered. (Riley was one of the roughly 2000 women killed by men in this country every year. Fortunately, in response to these crimes, two years ago, the White House formed the first-ever government plan to end gender-based violence… Oh, wait.)

The Laken Riley Act isn’t just a GOP favorite; 12 Democrats voted for it, too—see which here—which shows just how many people believe that immigrants to the U.S. commit more crimes than its citizens. (Which, of course, is demonstrably false.) Immigrants have long been used by the GOP as boogeyman responsible for America’s troubles, and now they’ve got the tools they need to disappear as many as possible.