Alabama's proposed version of the Laken Riley Act, by State Rep. Ernie Yarbrough (R-Trinity), could complement the federal law, as Georgia's Laken Riley Act does.
Riley, a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student, was murdered while jogging in 2024. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan national, was convicted later that year. The murder has been used as an example of how illegal immigrants are able to come to the U.S. and commit heinous crimes due to Biden-era policies.
The U.S. Congress passed the Laken Riley Act, requiring officials to detain illegal immigrants who commit certain crimes. Local authorities may work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the 287(g) program. In Alabama, 39 agencies have agreements through the federal program. However, Yarbrough said a local law is needed to fill in the gaps for state and local authorities.
This week, state representatives passed Alabama House Bill 13 (HB13). The law would allow local law enforcement to enter into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with federal law enforcement on a voluntary basis.
SEE ALSO: Yarbrough's 'Laken Riley Act' sails through House
The law would mandate the detention and removal of illegal aliens charged with specific crimes and would allow the state government to sue for injunctive relief over certain immigration-related decisions or alleged failures by the federal government.
Yarbrough told 1819 News the federal law is for top-priority illegal alien criminals, gang members, and drug lords, while the local process would help keep communities safe by giving local authorities power to enforce federal immigration law.
"While both provisions bear the same name and aim to strengthen immigration enforcement in response to crimes committed by illegal immigrants, they operate at different levels and use different enforcement tools," Yarbrough stated. "The federal act centralizes enforcement via DHS and empowers states to sue, whereas the Alabama bill decentralizes enforcement, empowering local law enforcement and jails to act directly in cooperation with federal agencies."
Alabama HB13 creates a new Article 2 under Alabama Code Title 31. The local process would give authorities who live and work in their own communities the ability to stop lower-priority criminals before their crimes escalate.
"They start off with petty crimes," Yarbrough said. "They get worse and worse and worse, and then they go to a really heinous crime. Well, that's what happened with the man who murdered Laken Riley. He had a criminal history with local law enforcement, committing smaller crimes such as shoplifting, and they got worse and worse. It was like he was testing the waters until he fully embraced what he intended to do, which was to murder people and to be a horrible criminal.
"And so, if this bill had been in place, they would have been able to not only arrest him and put him in jail, but instead of having to turn him back loose in the community, they could have contacted the federal government, gotten an immigration detainer and gotten him out of the country."
Yarbrough outlined 13 cases in the past two years that he believes may not have happened if Alabama's Laken Riley Act were in place. Those cases included arrests of criminal illegal immigrants for capital murder, multiple attempted murder charges, first-degree rape of a child, multiple sex-related offenses, assault, attempted burglary, DUI, shooting into an occupied dwelling, domestic violence, narcotics trafficking, child pornography and various other charges.
The kidnapping and murders of three people from Mobile County, Yarbrough said, were among the most heinous crimes that could have been prevented.
"I felt almost an immediate sense of two emotions: sadness and righteous anger," Yarbrough said of when he learned of the crimes.
Aurelia Choc Cac, 40, and her two children, 17-year-old Niurka Zule-Ta Choc and 2-year-old Anthony Garcia Choc, were kidnapped from their Theodore home on January 30. Just last week, their bodies were found buried in Summerdale.
"Whenever you have a senseless loss of life, that's bad enough, but when it's a senseless loss of life that is also committed by criminal elements that we could have prevented, it leads to righteous anger," Yarbrough added.
Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch said the suspect, Hector Gamaliel Argueta-Guerra, was in the United States illegally despite his violent history and ties to the Sureños gang.
"If my bill had passed last year, Mobile County, Baldwin County, they could have all entered into MOUs with the federal government, that they could have used to structure how they were going to help the federal government enforce existing immigration laws," Yarbrough emphasized. "Those MOUs can be customized and tailored to that particular relationship of say, Mobile or Baldwin County police, and the federal government. So, if they had an MOU in place that said, 'Hey, one of the things we're going to do to work with you, federal government, is if we've got known criminal elements of illegal aliens in our community, we're going to help get them out of our communities and deliver them into your care and custody."
Yarbrough said the local authorities knew about Argueta-Guerra, and a local judge wanted him deported. He pointed to Ecclesiastes 8:11: "When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people's hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong."
"If an illegal alien is here with a criminal history, they have to face justice or get out of our country," Yarbrough continued. "It's just a mixture of sadness and righteous anger because that woman and her children should not be dead and they were brutally murdered. So often it seems like some people in our justice system want to have more sympathy for the perpetrator of the crime than the victim. The truth is that we need swift justice."
Yarbrough said his bill would have given local authorities the framework to detain Argueta-Guerra. It lays out detailed local jail procedures and mandates collaboration with federal authorities, and would authorize police and jail staff to arrest, detain and transport illegal aliens.
The federal law does not include jail-level reporting mandates for provisions for tracking inmate immigration status. The Alabama bill does that by requiring quarterly and annual reporting on the number of foreign nationals booked, the number of ICE detainers and immigration violations, and the reporting of inquiries made to ICE and compliance certification by jail officials.
Yarbrough said he has talked to several sheriffs and chiefs of police. He also worked with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) to add a Democrat-requested amendment for reporting requirements.
The bill permits the Alabama Attorney General to report noncompliance to the governor and protects agencies from receiving grants to deal with federal immigration needs.
"It's a great way to give them two basic ways, more or less, to try to deal with this illegal immigration issue, particularly as it relates to hot spots of crime," Yarbrough said.
While some Democrats have come to Yarbrough with concerns of racial profiling, Yarbrough told 1819 News that is simply not true.
"The bill prohibits anybody from being held in prison simply upon the basis of their immigration status," he explained. "So, some Democrats like to claim, 'Obviously, this is going to be racial profiling,' and no, it's not. It absolutely is not. I wonder if they've read the bill. It's a great bill that has common sense safeguards and protections while putting at the forefront, the common sense safeguards and protections for our communities."
After lawmakers get back from Spring Break, HB13 will go to a Senate committee. Yarbrough said he hopes to see the bill make it to the Senate floor for a vote.
"We've got all focus on military action elsewhere, but we need to safeguard our home front," said Yarbrough. "Our first duty, our first responsibility in America is to get criminal elements out of our communities."
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