New Georgia Immigration Law (HB 1105)

Republicans in the Georgia state legislature have pushed through HB1105 on party lines (republicans love this bill, even though it is extremely stupid and will not improve our state) in response to the horrible murder of a young woman in Athens.

HB 1105 could make local law enforcement verify the immigration status of people over age 18 who have been arrested, or people who an “officer has probable cause to believe” have committed a crime.

Never you mind that, in our very own state, an extremely experienced federal immigration judge deported a U.S. citizen by accident, contrary to law. The judge, who had decades of experience in the complexities of immigration law, still got it wrong, because, shocker alert, immigration law is extremely complicated. It was actually an honest mistake. And it happened to a trained immigration law judge.

Now, the geniuses in the Georgia republican party want to burden our local law enforcement officials—whose jobs are already extremely dangerous and demanding—with additional complicated paperwork requiring them to inquire into matters that will likely violate our citizens’ civil liberties and expose our local cities, counties, and state to heightened and unnecessary risk of legal jeopardy—think Section 1983 and discrimination lawsuits.

I’m sure that requiring our local boys-and-girls-in-blue to engage in work too complicated for immigration judges will be absolutely fine.

The law is also, put simply, poorly written. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, as it was written by the intellectual lightweights of the republican party, but it’s still shockingly devoid of any understanding of immigration law.

For example, it requires local law enforcement to attempt to verify the lawful or unlawful status of persons, but fails to include meaningful instruction about how to do that.

While some people here lawfully will have an I-94 entry document, many won’t, including people who have been approved for certain forms of status based on their cooperation with law enforcement (U visas). The bill directs law enforcement officials to detain these crime victims who already work with law enforcement, because the bill’s republican authors are too dumb to write any of that into the bill, and we all know they don’t listen to experts in the field, since science and expertise are just “tools of the devil.”

If you can’t tell, this is a sarcastic post about the absolute waste of time that is the republican party. Such an unserious organization leeching off the fears and anxieties of the good people of our state and country, hoping to expand an ineffective prison system at the expense of the families who make our state such a wonderful place to live.

Sincerely,

Eric Adams, Senior Immigration Attorney
(Proud American and, at least today, disappointed Georgian)