Laken Riley Act will cost Marylanders $498 million, remove $457 million from tax revenue

Yahoo

07-03-2025

Officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest fugitives as part of Operation Cross Check in Dallas, Texas in 2019. (Photo courtesy Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
The Moore-Miller Administration has announced its budget proposal for fiscal year 2025, which includes $5 million in additional funds to local law enforcement, totaling $127 million. With the $457 million allocated to Maryland State Police, the total law enforcement expenditure from Annapolis is $584 million.
While the increase in police funding is welcome, it is not nearly enough to comply with the newly passed Laken Riley Act. Under this new federal law, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now required to detain any undocumented person who has been charged, arrested, convicted or admitted to committing acts constituting burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assault of a law enforcement officer, or bodily harm.
The most immediate effect of this legislation will be a surge in the number of individuals held in pretrial detention. Maryland is no stranger to this: Under the 1994 Crime Bill, the number of individuals held in pretrial detention skyrocketed across the state, especially in Baltimore.
Holding individuals in local jails indefinitely without due process is a costly procedure that spreads thin law enforcement officers when efforts could be instead used on targeting felons. The federal government contracts local jails to hold ICE detainees under the 287(g) program, which in Maryland only includes Harford, Cecil and Frederick counties. The remaining counties will be responsible for financing the expected surge in arrests under Laken Riley.
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While this figure has gone down in recent years, the Laken Riley Act overrides the right to due process for all offenses, resulting in the number of individuals held in pretrial detention rising.
While ostensibly aimed to increase public safety, previously enacted legislation on policing that targeted misdemeanor offenders in order to reduce violent crimes has been largely ineffective. The New York City Broken Windows policy is one such project. Through enforcing this policy, NYC police officers frisked 2.3 million people but found weapons in just 1.5% of stops.
This misuse of police funds will not only continue under the Laken Riley Act, but be exacerbated by the further removal of hundreds of thousands of undocumented people living in Maryland.
The Laken Riley Act will sharply reverse the downward trend of pretrial detention in Maryland's urban and suburban counties. Furthermore, local and state law enforcement will be compelled to divert manpower toward the arrest and detention of undocumented immigrants merely accused of a misdemeanor offense.
While not excusing illegal immigration or diminishing the the tragic case of Laken Riley, data from the Cato Institute demonstrates that undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit homicide than American citizens. Furthermore, under the recently reinstated 'Remain in Mexico' policy, the amount of Department of Homeland Security encounters with convicted felons who had been deported back to Mexico skyrocketed, as DHS resources were diverted toward otherwise innocent immigrants seeking asylum.
This precedent demonstrates that an austere crackdown on illegal immigration does not accomplish its stated goal. The Laken Riley Act includes zero funding provisions, leaving it to the states to pick up the slack. The increase in police spending from Annapolis in 2025 will not be enough to bridge the gap; implementation of the law is estimated to cost $83 billion over three years, which if applied to each state proportional to population, will cost Marylanders an additional $498 million, more than the entire law enforcement expenditure, with the whole efforts of local and state police now directed toward an immigration crackdown.
The Department of Justice has ordered the prosecution of local and state law enforcement deemed to be an impediment to the execution of the Laken Riley Act, leaving Maryland's police little choice but to follow through with this immense commitment of resources.
Nobody wants to have someone they love become the next Laken Riley. Unfortunately, the law named for her does not lower the likelihood of such tragedies; rather, it makes them more likely, all at an immense cost to the taxpayer that Marylanders cannot afford.
Furthermore, the consequence of removing every undocumented immigrant from the state would be the loss of $476.3 million in state and local taxes. This is a further fiscal hazard not only to implementation of immigration law, but also to promoting the level of shared prosperity that gives Maryland the third-best public school system in the nation.
This crackdown will expensively disrupt communities and quality of life across the state, with no evidence that it will make Marylanders and other Americans any safer.