DHS arrests over 17,500 illegal immigrants under Laken Riley Act

More than 17,500 illegal immigrants have been arrested for crimes under the first law President Trump signed in his second term: the Laken Riley Act.

The law is in honor of a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was murdered by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant in February 2024.

The Department of Homeland Security said the Venezuelan was previously arrested and released before Riley’s death. It also said the Venezuelan was a member of the terrorist criminal gang Tren de Aragua, which the State Department designated in February as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The act requires the department to detain illegal immigrants arrested for crimes such as theft or assaulting a law enforcement officer and hold them for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and processing.

It also allows states to sue the federal government for violating federal immigration laws that endanger U.S. citizens.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced the end of Operation Angel’s Honor, a two-week nationwide operation targeting those who committed Laken Riley Act crimes.

In total, ICE arrested 1,030 criminal illegal aliens during this operation, according to HHS.

“President Trump has empowered us to arrest and remove the millions of violent criminal illegal aliens unleashed on the United States by the previous administration. Now, these criminals will face justice and be removed from our country,” Ms. Noem said in a Wednesday press release.

“We can never bring Laken back, but we can do everything in our power to bring these heinous criminals to justice,” she added.

Some of those arrests include one Cuban convicted of 17 counts of larceny and another from India who was convicted of four counts of sexual assault.

The Laken Riley Act has faced opposition from some groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which called the legislation a “false, xenophobic narrative about immigrants.”

“The bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing; it exploits the tragic death of Ms. Laken Riley to expand the detention of people accused of non-violent offenses, without actually improving public safety but while encouraging discriminatory and arbitrary overdetention,” the organization said in a January letter to Congress.

Two days after Mr. Trump began his second term, the Executive Office of the President released a statement on the necessity of the bill.

“This commonsense legislation would provide law enforcement with the tools they need to protect our communities and prevent future senseless tragedies, and is consistent with the Administration’s broader efforts to strengthen enforcement of our immigration laws and improve the security of the Nation’s borders,” the statement said.