GA House passes bill that allows cops to arrest suspected illegal aliens

It took the death of a young nursing student at the hands of an illegal alien to pass a bill that requires police and sheriff's departments to help identify illegal aliens, arrest them, detain them and hold them for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to take them into custody.

The for House Bill 1105 was passed 97-74, showing us that there exists in the Georgia House of Representatives 74 leftists who don't really care about anything other than staying in office. 

The vote came when police charged Jose Ibarra, an illegal alien from Venezuela, with the assault and brutal murder of Laken Riley, an honors student at a Georgia school for nursing.

Ibarra illegally entered the United States in 2022.

Laken attended Augusta University's Athens campus and had begun her college career at the University of Georgia. She was murdered last week while jogging on a popular trail on UGA's campus. 

The bill sets new requirements for jail officials to check with ICE to see if people who don't appear to be American citizens are known to be in the United States illegally. This will enforce a law already in existence that requires sheriffs to check with ICE for anyone who does not appear to be an American citizen. 

The bill moves to the Georgia Senate for debate.

"Fixing policy in the face of unspeakable tragedy is not politics," said Rep. Houston Gaines, an Athens Republican. "It’s doing the right thing to ensure something like this never occurs again."

Sheriffs deny that they aren't following current laws and checking with ICE. This bill charges sheriffs who do not check immigration status with a misdemeanor. It also denies state funding to jails and sheriffs that do not cooperate, and baby, money talks.

Responding to criticism that this is about politics, one Republican lawmaker said it is not about politics but about doing the right thing, and it's about time.

This sounds as though there was a lack of consistency by local law enforcement when it came to checking legal status when someone was taken into custody. Georgia is not a sanctuary state. Some cities, though, like Athens, have been acting as sanctuary cities due to Democrats in office and their virtue signaling supporters.

Georgia Democrats are against the bill and claim the it will cause long detentions and separate parents from their U.S.-born children, which is rare as a Haley's Comet siting.

They also say it produces distrust of police in immigrant communities, but it sure increases trust in American citizens.

"We want justice for what happened to Laken Riley. We don’t want violent people who are here legally or not legally to be on the streets," said Rep. Esther Panitch, a Sandy Springs Democrat who sees illegal aliens as future Democrats. "But this bill won’t do it. This bill won’t close our borders. It will not make us safer, and it will not make women safer."

Panitch has thankfully never lost a child to violence, I suspect, nor was ever robbed or raped by one. It might not be a rampant as some believe, but why should it happen at all with illegal aliens coming here when that's against the law. If someone is willing to break one law, why not more?

The bill would obviously increase efforts for public safety. It would take those who get arrested and found to be illegally in the country off the streets. And it gives local law enforcement a mandate to enforce state law, which would untie their hands as many of them want to do the right thing.

Georgia Latino lawmakers are at odds with each other. Democrat Rep. Pedro Marin, the longest-serving Latino member of the House, said this is fear mongering of foreigners. That's nonsense--it's actually following the law as spelled out in our Constitution.

But a Latino Republican, Rep. Rey Martinez, said that Republicans are only targeting criminals. "We’re not after the immigrants. We’re not. We’re not after them," Martinez said. "What we are after is these folks who commit crime. That’s what we’re after."

Just do your damn job, man.

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