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EXCLUSIVE: More than 17,500 illegal immigrants in 2025 have been arrested for crimes requiring mandatory detention under the Laken Riley Act — the first law President Donald Trump signed in his second term.
The act is named for Laken Riley, a Georgia college student murdered by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who had been previously arrested and released before her death.
The act mandates that illegal immigrants arrested — but not necessarily yet convicted — for several specific crimes must be held for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and processing.
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Yaser Garcia Ramirez, left inset, and Santos Chim-Diego, right inset, are seen against a backdrop of a Department of Homeland Security operation. (Carlin Stiehl/Getty Images; DHS; DHS)
Qualifying crimes include theft-related offenses, DUI or DWI, and violent crimes including murder, rape, sexual abuse, assault on police and firearms infractions.
Secretary Kristi Noem also announced Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had concluded “Operation Angel’s Honor,” a two-week nationwide endeavor launched in Riley’s honor to strictly target Laken Riley Act offenders.
That operation alone netted an average of dozens of criminal illegal immigrants per day.
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“In honor of Laken Riley, ICE launched Operation Angel’s Honor — in the last 2 weeks alone arresting more than 1,000 criminal illegal aliens under the authority of the Laken Riley Act,” Noem told Fox News Digital.
Noem credited Trump for empowering her agency to go after millions of criminal illegal immigrants residing in the U.S., including those “unleashed” into the interior by previous administrations.
“We can never bring Laken back, but we can do everything in our power to bring these heinous criminals to justice,” Noem said.
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Some of the Laken Riley Act offenders captured during “Operation Angel’s Honor” include Sergio Luis Hernandez Gonzalez of Cuba, convicted on 17 counts of larceny, two counts of selling cocaine, along with vehicle theft and other offenses.
Jersson Andrey Poveda Delgado of Colombia was convicted of assaulting a police officer, while Dominican national Yaser Garcia Ramirez netted a slew of charges, including conspiracy to manufacture and distribute heroin, domestic violence and obstruction of law enforcement.
Another illegal immigrant, Santos Chim-Diego from Guatemala, had been convicted of resisting plus assault on an officer, DUI and child cruelty.
An Iraqi national named Hamid Abdulimam Al Nassar was captured during Operation Angel’s Honor after he was convicted of procuring a prostitute who is a minor, several drug offenses, fraud, embezzlement and aggravated assault.
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Another criminal illegal immigrant, Nathaniel Sterling from Jamaica, was detained after convictions for carnal abuse, weapons possession and disorderly conduct.
Mexican national Omar Barojas-Arenas’ recent arrest also fell under the Laken Riley Act, after he was convicted of kidnapping, while Jorby Joel Escuraina-Suarez from Venezuela was convicted of aggravated assault with a weapon.
While DHS has called the Laken Riley Act’s enforcement a success, several critics have said the law forces deportation proceedings on people who may not pose safety risks — with some pointing to the law’s usage of arrest versus conviction as a pretext for the feds to take custody of a subject.
“This bill does nothing to improve safety or fix our broken immigration system,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director for the American Immigration Council.
“Under the guise of preventing violence, the bill forces immigration officers to indefinitely detain and deport non-citizens who pose no public safety risk, without access to basic due process,” she said in a statement after the law passed.
“The bill also gives state attorneys general unprecedented power over immigration policy. The bill strips people of their basic rights and upends how the U.S. government enforces immigration law,” Gupta concluded.
