The Laken Riley Act is a federal law named after a Georgia nursing student murdered in early 2024; it mandates the detention, without bond, of non-citizens arrested for or charged with certain crimes, and empowers states to sue the federal government over immigration enforcement decisions.
The law was signed by President Donald Trump on January 29, 2025, and went into effect immediately, marking one of the first major immigration laws passed under his new administration.[1][2][3][4][5]
The Laken Riley Act marks a major expansion of immigration detention and state-level involvement in federal immigration disputes, with mounting evidence that its reach far exceeds the problem it seeks to solve.[3][1]