The Laken Riley Act reshapes ICE detention by requiring the agency to take into custody any noncitizen who is inadmissible to the United States and has been arrested for, charged with, convicted of, or admits to committing theft, burglary, assault on a law enforcement officer, or any crime causing death or serious bodily injury.1Congress.gov. S.5 – Laken Riley Act 119th Congress (2025-2026) Signed into law on January 29, 2025 as Public Law 119-1, it removes the case-by-case discretion ICE field offices once used and denies bond to people who fall inside its categories.2U.S. Department of Homeland Security. President Trump Signs the Laken Riley Act into Law
Who ICE Must Now Detain
The law adds a new category to the mandatory detention provisions at 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c). To fall inside it, a person has to meet two conditions at the same time.
First, they must be inadmissible under specific grounds: entering without authorization, committing fraud or misrepresentation in seeking admission, or lacking proper documents. Second, they must have been arrested for, charged with, convicted of, or admitted to conduct amounting to one of these offenses:
- Theft, larceny, or shoplifting
- Burglary
- Assault of a law enforcement officer
- Any crime that causes death or serious bodily injury to another person
The offenses are read using the law of the state or locality where the arrest happened, so what qualifies as “theft” or “serious bodily injury” varies by jurisdiction.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1226 Apprehension and Detention of Aliens
The original House version from the 118th Congress covered only theft-related offenses. The enacted Senate version, S.5, added assault on law enforcement and crimes causing death or serious bodily injury, broadening who falls under the mandate.4Congress.gov. Text – S.5 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) Laken Riley Act
The trigger sits unusually low. A conviction is not required. An arrest alone activates the detention mandate, and so does being charged or admitting to conduct that meets the elements of a covered offense. Charges that are later dropped, or an acquittal at trial, do not by themselves pull a person back out of the category as the statute is written.
No Bond, and a Narrow Way to Challenge Classification
People held under this provision are not eligible for release on bond. They stay in immigration custody until removal proceedings end, which can take months and sometimes longer. There is no individualized hearing where a judge weighs flight risk or danger and decides on release in the meantime.
The one avenue open to a detained person is a Joseph hearing, named after a Board of Immigration Appeals decision. In that proceeding, the person can argue they are not “properly included” in a mandatory detention category. The challenge is narrow. It might contest whether the offense qualifies as “theft” under the relevant state law, or whether the person actually falls within the specific inadmissibility grounds the statute names. If the immigration judge agrees, the person moves out of mandatory detention and becomes eligible for an ordinary bond hearing. It is a classification challenge, not a review of whether detention makes sense on the facts.
Mandatory Detainers and the Local Jail Handoff
The Act does not just authorize detention. It requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue a detainer for anyone who falls inside the new category. If the person is already in state or local custody, the detainer instructs the jail to hold them for up to 48 hours past their scheduled release so ICE can pick them up. If they are not in anyone else’s custody, DHS must “effectively and expeditiously” take them into custody directly.4Congress.gov. Text – S.5 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) Laken Riley Act
The detainer itself is Form I-247A, the request ICE sends to jails and prisons to hold an individual past their release date.5U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigration Detainer – Notice of Action Before this law, issuing detainers was largely discretionary; ICE could decline to issue one if the case did not fit its enforcement priorities. That discretion is gone for covered offenses.
The identification pipeline generally runs through Secure Communities. When local officers book someone and take fingerprints, the FBI shares the prints with DHS, and a match triggers alerts to ICE and to the arresting agency.6U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Secure Communities An alert used to be a signal ICE could act on; under this Act, an alert tied to a covered offense triggers a legal obligation to act.
State Attorneys General Can Sue the Federal Government
Section 3 of the Act gives state attorneys general, and other authorized state officers, a right to sue the federal government in federal district court to force compliance. Courts are directed to move these cases quickly. The financial-harm threshold to bring suit is only $100.4Congress.gov. Text – S.5 – 119th Congress (2025-2026) Laken Riley Act
The grounds reach beyond the detention mandate. A state can sue over:
- Releasing a noncitizen from custody when the law required detention
- Failing to properly inspect people seeking admission, including required asylum interviews
- Failing to stop issuing visas to nationals of a country that unreasonably refuses to accept deportees
- Violating parole limitations, such as the requirement that parole be granted only case by case
- Failing to detain someone who has already been ordered removed
States historically had limited room to challenge federal immigration decisions in court because of preemption. This statute creates a targeted exception by giving states standing where none existed, and it applies to a broader set of enforcement functions than the offense list at the front of the law would suggest.1Congress.gov. S.5 – Laken Riley Act 119th Congress (2025-2026)
How Sanctuary Jurisdictions Fit In
The Act does not preempt sanctuary policies by name. Dozens of cities and counties still limit their cooperation with ICE, from declining to honor detainers to barring officers from asking about immigration status. The federal obligation, though, now exists regardless of what a local jail does. If a jail releases someone rather than holding them on a detainer, ICE is still required to take custody by other means.
The lawsuit provision changes the incentives too. A state attorney general who believes a non-cooperating jurisdiction contributed to a federal enforcement failure sues the federal government, not the city. That points legal pressure at DHS to work around uncooperative localities, so sanctuary policies remain in place while the enforcement framework is built to operate without them.
Constitutional Challenges Already Filed
The arrest-only trigger is the piece drawing the earliest litigation. In September 2025, a federal judge in Boston ruled that detaining an 18-year-old based solely on a prior arrest, with no bond hearing, violated his Fifth Amendment right to due process. The court ordered a bond hearing or release.7American Civil Liberties Union. Federal Court Declares Noncitizens Detention Under Laken Riley Act Unconstitutional
The constitutional question at the center of that ruling is whether Congress can require prolonged detention without a bond hearing for people who have only been arrested, or whose charges were dismissed, or who were acquitted. As written, the statute does not release any of those groups from the mandatory category. Different federal courts are likely to reach different answers before an appellate court settles it.
Capacity Strain Behind the Mandate
Detention at this scale needs beds, transportation, officers, and processing space that ICE did not maintain for these offense categories under prior priorities. Some projections suggest ICE would need more than triple its existing detention bed capacity to fully comply, plus roughly double its ground transportation and nearly double its staffing. Even a narrower reading of the mandate points to a substantially larger daily detained population, sourced through expanded contracts with local jails and private facilities or through new dedicated capacity. The result on the ground is that field offices now treat a misdemeanor shoplifting arrest, if paired with the right inadmissibility grounds, with the same procedural urgency as a serious violent offense.