This Month in Criminalization

Written By eva nagao

February 6, 2025
(Part I)

The waves of criminalizing legislation, executive orders, and copaganda emanating from the White House, Congress, and state legislators and governors in the current moment are dizzying and overwhelming, to say the least. As many have pointed out, that is the point — to destabilize us, to sow fear, to secure compliance, and thus enable and justify the most blatant and violent seizures and abuses of power aimed at entrenching a white supremacist Christofascist authoritarian regime. 

Our goal in these monthly roundups is not to contribute to the overwhelm, but to help you sift through the firehose of information and focus in a few things we can and must do from wherever we are — as organizers, community members, health care providers, educators, legislators, and funders — to interrupt the criminalization that is the core mechanism and methodology of implementing and rationalizing Right-wing and fascist agendas. 

Criminalization of Migrants

The Laken Riley Act, which has now been signed into law, imposes mandatory detention, without possibility of bail, for any undocumented person (including DACA recipients, parents, or teenagers) who is accused of (including false accusations), arrested for, or admits to facts amounting to shoplifting and other theft-related offenses, assault on a police officer, or any offense that causes death or serious bodily injury. 

  • It doesn't matter if the charges are thrown out, the prosecutor declines to pursue them, the person enters a plea to a different offense, or a judge or jury finds the person not guilty. 

  • Many diversion programs require a person to admit to certain facts or plead guilty to an offense in exchange for an opportunity to have the charges dropped if they participate in a program. Under this legislation, diversion program participants will be at risk of being funneled into mandatory migrant detention even if they successfully complete program requirements and all charges are dropped or reduced.

  • This draconian and cruel legislation represents yet another way that the federal administration, with the support of both political parties, is deploying and weaponizing local law enforcement to meet its mass detention and deportation objectives by targeting the most vulnerable migrants. As the Trump administration moves to further restrict public benefits for undocumented migrants, people will be driven even further into poverty and desperation.

  • Shoplifting and theft-related offenses are consistently among the top 5 arrest charges for women in the U.S. Shoplifting enforcement has dramatically increased in recent years in response to corporate copaganda, with disparate impacts on Black, Indigenous, and women and trans people of color who experience the highest rates of poverty in the country.

  • Cops routinely charge protesters and people they brutalize with "assault on a law enforcement officer" to chill protest and cover up their own violence.

  • The Act makes no exceptions for survivors of violence acting in self-defense.

  • The Act could have dramatic impacts on the number of people held indefinitely in immigration detention. Additionally, without the possibility of making a case for release while their immigration case is heard, many will feel like they have no choice but to agree to voluntary deportation to get out of inhumane detention conditions, which are only likely to worsen as the administration lifts federal standards for local jails detaining migrants, begins to transfer migrants to military detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay and Aurora, Colorado, and enters into agreements with third countries like El Salvador to incarcerate people under tortuous conditions.

  • NOTE: The Laken Riley Act does NOT apply to (1) green card holders (2) people who were granted refugee status outside of the United States and entered through that status; and (3) people who entered the United States on a visa even if they have overstayed their visa.

  • Help stop migrants from coming into contact with police, ICE, or Customs and Border Patrol:

    • Continue to organize to decriminalize offenses like shoplifting and reduce police presence, power, and resources.

    • Download, post, and share these posters designating private areas in your buildings, health care facilities, schools, and places of worship and offering guidance for keeping ICE OUT, and make copies of these red cards to hand out in your community!

    • Start an ICE watch and hotline in your community — and be careful to make sure that any information you share is verified and specific (see graphics below). Download a playbook here!

    • Keep ICE out of health care facilities and schools.

    • Fight against 287(g) agreements between your local law enforcement agencies and sheriffs that enable and commit them to engage in federal immigration enforcement, and against deployment of state National Guards for immigration enforcement.

      • Check to see if there's already a 287(g) agreement in your community here.

      • Monitor your police department and sheriff's efforts to enter into one. 

      • Use this toolkit to fight back!

    • Fight shoplifting enforcement! Call attention to and engage in community boycotts of stores like Walmart and Walgreens that engage in aggressive and discriminatory shoplifting enforcement through private security or police.

    • Push for pre-arrest diversion programs for shoplifting offenses that do not require arrest or admission of guilt or to facts amounting to shoplifting or other theft-related offenses.

      • Beware of "private" shoplifting diversion programs operated at a profit by big box stores like Walmart which charge people exorbitant fees to avoid criminal charges — there is nothing to stop them from turning people over to ICE for mandatory detention once they complete the program.

 
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This Month in Criminalization