Josh Riley Dishonors Holocaust Remembrance Day

Congressman Josh Riley issued a nice statement about Holocaust Remembrance Day…

…a couple of weeks after he voted for legislation to protect war criminals from prosecution and enabling Donald Trump to send immigrants to Homeland Security prison camps on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations, with no right to a fair trial.

Actions speak louder than words.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz prison camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

I’d like to think that every American knows what the Holocaust was, and what made it horrific. If you don’t know about the Holocaust, or would like to refresh your memory, the United States Holocaust Museum offers solid resources, both online and in a physical location in Washington DC.

To put it briefly, the Holocaust was a program of systematic violence implemented by Nazi Germany that imprisoned, tortured, and murdered millions of people. Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust, but many others were caught up in its bloody machinery, including the Roma and Sinti people, LGBTQ people, artists, and political dissidents.

Culturally, the Holocaust was enabled by the scapegoating of minority social groups. Operationally, the Holocaust was enabled by the mass detention of people on the basis of their ethnic and national identities.

Both of these tactics are at the center of the Make America Great Again political movement of Donald Trump and his allies in the US Congress.

I am not saying that the United States is in the middle of a new Holocaust. I am saying that the United States is moving rapidly in that direction.

The onset of fascism in the United States is the most important political issue of our time.

There are people who argue that Americans don’t care about fascism, claiming that voters care more about economic issues. What this perspective fails to address is the pervasive nature of fascism. The fascism of Donald Trump seeks to destroy the entire system of American democracy in order to empower a small number of economic elites such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, using bigotry as a means to justify its dangerous cruelty.

None of the political challenges America faces can be addressed if we allow fascists to gain control over the US government.

Congressman Josh Riley released a short statement on X and Facebook about Holocaust Remembrance Day this afternoon. It reads:

“Today, we honor the memory of the six million Jews and countless others who perished during the atrocities of the Holocaust by recommitting to our duty to stand united against hatred, discrimination, and intolerance.”

That’s a nice statement. Unfortunately, these words are in stark contrast to Josh Riley’s first votes as a member of the US House of Representatives.

Josh Riley’s first vote on standalone legislation as a member of Congress was to support H.R. 29, also known as the Laken Riley Act. H.R. 29 scapegoats immigrants living in the United States, blaming them for violent crime. This legislation makes it mandatory for any “alien” (non-citizen or non-national) who is mistakenly arrested or falsely accused of shoplifting to be sent to a Homeland Security prison camp where they can be indefinitely detained or deported from the United States without any trial or other opportunity to defend themselves.

Josh Riley also voted for H.R. 23, a bill that seeks to defund and disable the International Criminal Court. The job of the International Criminal Court is to prosecute war criminals. H.R. 23 makes it easier for war criminals to evade justice.

With these two votes, Josh Riley put himself on the side of war criminals and massive prison camps for social outsiders.

Of course, Josh Riley didn’t put it that way. He described his actions quite differently. Congressman Riley has yet to make any statement explaining his support for Republican legislation to wreck the International Criminal Court. On Friday, however, Riley finally made a short statement about his vote for the Laken Riley Act in an email sent to people who had previously signed up for his newsletter. That statement is as follows (read by an automated voice):

“I voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act because Upstate New Yorkers deserve an immigration system that is both tough and fair. It is crucial that we take action to keep dangerous individuals off the streets, reduce crime, and enforce our laws. By ending "catch-and-release" policies for undocumented immigrants who commit certain crimes, this bill takes an important step toward keeping our communities safe–and that will always be my top priority.

We need to do much more to fix our broken immigration system. I support bipartisan, comprehensive reform that expedites legal proceedings for immigrants by putting more judges on the job, and creates a pathway to citizenship for those who work hard, pay their taxes and contribute to our communities. At the same time, we must secure our border, and ensure law enforcement officers, at every level, have the resources they need to do their jobs. I am committed to working with anyone to fix our broken immigration system and make these policies a reality.”

Josh Riley also was asked about his vote for the Laken Riley Act on a January 13 episode of The Roundtable, a political radio show hosted by Ian Pickus on WAMC, a public radio station in Albany. Riley’s response was this (again, read by an automated voice):

"I don't share those concerns because the bill does provide for due process, it does provide for a hearing. What we're talking about here are folks, it only applies, I think it's really important for folks to understand, it only applies to people who are already in the country illegally. So, if you're in the country lawfully, this bill would not apply to you. And then it only applies further to folks who have been arrested for or convicted of things like burglary, various theft charges, and basically what it says is while we're pending the results of your case, you're detained for that period. And so those people can't go back out onto the streets to commit other crimes in the interim.”

"I did what I said I was going to do during the campaign. I had so many voters talk to me, and now constituents talk to me about their concerns with a completely broken immigration system, where both Democrats and Republicans have just completely failed on this issue. And so, I'm looking for proposals that are both tough and fair. If they're tough and they're fair, I'm going to support them. If they're not, then I won't. I think this bill was tough and it was fair. It's not going to solve every problem with our immigration system. There's a huge amount of work that needs to be done on this, but it's a step in the right direction."

I was struck by what Congressman Riley had to say in these statements, because much of what he had to say was either blatantly untrue or misleading. Let’s go through what Riley said point by point.

Josh Riley said that “It is crucial that we take action to keep dangerous individuals off the streets, reduce crime, and enforce our laws.” The fact is that the Laken Riley Act is highly ineffective as a crime-prevention measure. That’s because immigrants in the United States are actually less dangerous than US citizens and are less likely to commit crimes than US citizens. If Congress sincerely wanted to pass tough-on-crime legislation, it would have passed a law to put American citizens in detention camp without the right to a fair trial. Targeting immigrants, when they are actually better behaved than citizens, makes no sense, if the purpose of the law is to actually fight crime. The purpose of H.R. 29 is not to fight crime. The purpose of the legislation is to encourage a culture of hatred against foreigners in America.

The absurdity of the fascist intolerance embedded in Josh Riley’s statement becomes especially clear when he says that it’s crucial that we “enforce our laws”. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the United States of America is truly not enforcing its laws. If that’s the case, passing the Laken Riley Act to change that would be completely pointless. After all, the Laken Riley Act is a law. If the USA isn’t enforcing its laws, then passing a new law to make it the law that laws are followed wouldn’t do much good, would it? This phrase is nothing more than hot air, a politician’s way of implying a problem that doesn’t exist.

The United States of America already does enforce its laws. That doesn’t mean that crime never takes place, because it’s impossible to prevent all crime all the time. That’s just not how the world works. There’s an appropriate balance between law enforcement and the freedom of people to go about their lives without being harassed. That balance had been achieved. The fact is that there is no nationwide crime wave in the USA. In fact, crime rates have been falling for years.

When Josh Riley says that we need to reduce crime, he might as well say that America needs socks. We already have lots of socks, so there’s no need to pass pro-sock legislation. In the same vein, crime has already been reduced, so America doesn’t really need new legislation to reduce crime. Josh Riley is trying to invent a crisis that doesn’t exist. The real problem we have is with politicians who keep on trying to convince voters that there is a big crime wave when no such thing exists. It’s a shame to see Congressman Riley add his voice to these dishonest diatribes. H.R. 29 takes a sledgehammer to the balance between law enforcement and freedom, making the USA into a fascist police state for no good reason.

Next, Josh Riley complains about “catch-and-release policies for undocumented immigrants who commit certain crimes”. First of all, there’s a big problem with Riley using the term “catch-and-release” to refer to human beings. “Catch-and-release” is term that comes from fishing and hunting. It’s a phrase that’s used to refer to animals, not people. In catch-and-release programs, hunters and fishers capture, but don’t kill, their prey. Often this is done for the sake of the conservation of endangered species. Josh Riley uses the phrase “catch-and-release” as a derogatory term, when it’s actually a sensible wildlife management tool. If Josh Riley really had those “Upstate New York values” he keeps on bragging about, he would understand that. For Josh Riley to use this language to refer to people suggests a casual dismissal of the humanity of immigrants. That’s the sort of thing that fascists do. I understand that fascism is the new big trend in Washington DC right now, but the people of New York’s 19th congressional district sent Josh Riley to Washington to stand against fascist dehumanization, not to participate in it.

Practically speaking, what Josh Riley dismissively refers to as “catch-and-release” is simply standard operating procedure. Yes, if a person is caught shoplifting, they may be detained for a short amount of time while their arrest paperwork is being processed, but it simply is not standard police procedure to keep all accused shoplifters behind bars while they are awaiting trial. That’s because our society does not have the material or financial resources required to keep every person accused of a minor crime in a maximum security prison. Josh Riley seems to think that America can’t be safe unless we have new prisons all over the place to hold people accused of stealing candy bars. That’s not good government.

Josh Riley says that “keeping our communities safe” will always be his “top priority”. That’s a very fascist set of priorities. What Josh Riley is saying here is that he thinks fighting crime is more important than upholding our constitutional rights. It’s frightening to hear an elected leader talk that way. I used to believe that in the United States of America, freedom and democracy were always the top priority. Josh Riley is reminding me that there have always been politicians who don’t respect the Bill of Rights.

This claim that a vote for the Laken Riley Act makes community safety a top priority also doesn’t make any logical sense - because the Laken Riley Act focuses on harsh, unconstitutional punishments for minor, non-violent offenses. H.R. 29 is designed to reduce murder by cracking down on accused shoplifters, but there is no such thing as a shoplifting-to-murder pipeline. Shoplifting is not an activity that typically leads to any violent crime, much less murder. Josh Riley might as well vote for a bill that sends people to Homeland Security prison camps whenever they are accused of jaywalking, or not paying a parking meter on time. That’s how far removed the Laken Riley Act is from actually keeping any community in Upstate New York safe from violent crime.

“I support bipartisan, comprehensive reform that expedites legal proceedings for immigrants,” Josh Riley says. You can put this statement into the talk-is-cheap category. A search of the U.S. House of Representatives database shows that, to date, Congressman Josh Riley has introduced zero pieces of legislation on any subject, and has cosponsored zero pieces of legislation introduced by other, more senior members of Congress. Members of Congress are in Washington D.C. to pass laws, not to talk about what they want to do some day. Riley says that he supports bipartisan reform on immigration, but the truth is that, so far, the only immigration legislation that Josh Riley supports is H.R. 29, the fascist Laken Riley Act.

Does the Laken Riley Act expedite legal proceedings for immigrants? That depends on what kind of legal proceedings you’re talking about. The legislation does nothing to help immigrants enter the United States legally. In fact, since the Laken Riley Act was passed, Donald Trump has stopped all legal immigration. People who were following the law in order to immigrate into the USA legally have been prevented from doing so. Josh Riley has done nothing to help those immigrants. He has not even said anything in their defense.

On the other hand, if a fair trial is the kind of legal proceeding you would like to see expedited, then the Laken Riley Act is your kind of legislation. Before the Laken Riley Act, when people in the United States were accused of a crime, they were allowed due process. That meant they got to have a lawyer. They got to have the right to file legal motions, to confront their accusers. They got to have a fair trial, and then were punished only if convicted. Those were the days of innocent-until-proven-guilty America.

Those days are gone in America. Now, the presumption of innocence is a privilege that’s only given to American citizens and nationals of the United States. (A US national is someone who is native to US territories like American Samoa.) If you’re an “alien” of any kind, whether you’re in the United States legally or not, the Laken Riley Act has changed that. Now, non—citizens don’t have the right to a fair trial anymore. Now, they are presumed guilty.

In his radio interview, Josh Riley insisted that’s not true. He said: “The bill does provide for due process, it does provide for a hearing. What we're talking about here are folks, it only applies, I think it's really important for folks to understand, it only applies to people who are already in the country illegally. So, if you're in the country lawfully, this bill would not apply to you.”

What Josh Riley says in that statement is incorrect. It is factually wrong. I know this, because I have read the legislation, and I have read the Immigration and Nationality Act, the previous law that H.R. 29 amends.

There is no provision in H.R. 29 that provides any right to a hearing or any other due process. Such language simply does not exist in the legislation Josh Riley voted for. Furthermore, in the section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that H.R. 29 refers to and amends (8 U.S. Code § 1226, subsection C), it is quite clear that the Attorney General of the United States is not allowed to release aliens from custody unless the imprisoned alien is needed to protect a witness in a separate criminal investigation into “major criminal activity”. What’s more, the Immigration and Nationality Act specifically forbids any court from reviewing the decision of the US Attorney General to imprison an alien under the authority of the Act.

The term “alien” is important to understand in this legislation. Legally, an “alien” is anybody who isn’t a citizen of the United States, or the national resident of any US territory, such as American Samoa. The section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that H.R. 29 amends makes no distinction between a person who entered the United States legally and someone who crossed the border and remains undocumented. An “alien” might be in the US illegally, but might also be a foreign tourist visiting the Grand Canyon with a visa. An “alien” could be a citizen of a foreign country working here officially, above board, using one of the many visas that have been available for that purpose. An “alien” could be the foreign spouse of a person who has been an American citizen their whole life.

An “alien” who is subject to the harsh terms of the Laken Riley Act could be a college student legally present in the United States in order to attend a university. This is especially troubling for New York’s 19th congressional district, which is home to colleges such as Cornell University, Ithaca College, Binghamton University, and SUNY Cortland. A student attending SUNY New Paltz could be detained and kept in a prison camp on the mere suspicion of shoplifting - even if they didn’t do it - even if there is evidence that they committed any crime.

When Josh Riley says that the bill he voted for doesn’t apply to people who are in the USA lawfully, he’s not telling the truth. Besides, as we all know, Donald Trump has signed executive orders that declare as newly illegal large numbers of people who entered the United States through legal processes officially sanctioned by the federal government before Trump took office. He has retroactively declared these legal immigrants to be illegal immigrants, changing the rules midstream.

Sending any “alien”, whether in the United States legally or illegally, to a Homeland Security prison camp is made mandatory under the Laken Riley Act, if a person has been inaccurately arrested for shoplifting, even if no criminal charges are filed. This legal requirement applies to children as well as to adults. So, if a shopkeeper accuses a 7 year-old child who is not a US citizen (or national) of taking a candy bar without paying for it, the police have no choice but to send that child to a Homeland Security prison camp, and the federal authorities are then only allowed to release that child from the prison if the child is a witness or can help a witness in a serious criminal investigation.

Even if another child comes forward and admits that they, not the child in the Homeland Security prison camp, took the candy bar, the child is not set free. Even if the child’s parents cannot be found, the child will not be set free. The child is not allowed to be released, by the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The child will either remain in a Homeland Security prison camp, or will be deported, all alone, to a foreign country. The child is permanently designated as a “criminal alien” even if they are completely innocent of any crime.

This is who Josh Riley is making it his top priority to protect Upstate New York communities from: Little kids falsely-accused of shoplifting.

This law Josh Riley helped rush through Congress without any hearings or opportunity for amendment certainly is tough, but it’s anything but fair. H.R. 29 is purposefully unfair. So, it’s not fair, but it’s tough. That’s the worst of both possible worlds.

The word “tough” is a favorite among politicians who want to seem like they’re strong. Who wouldn’t want to support tough legislation, after all? Emotionally, the word is appealing, but I encourage you to step back for a minute and think about this instead of just reacting emotionally.

Why should America have an immigration system that is tough? Who does it benefit if life is made tough for immigrants? How does it make your life any better for immigrants to be treated toughly?

The problem with tough legislation is that it confuses suffering with competence. Think about this in terms of cancer treatment. If you get cancer, do you want to take a chemotherapy that’s tough, or chemotherapy that’s effective? How about a chemotherapy that’s designed to be targeted, impacting only malignant cancer cells, while leaving the rest of your body alone?

What we need in America is smart immigration legislation. Tough immigration policy is like an old-fashioned chemotherapy. Perhaps it will decrease border crossings, but it just might kill the rest of country while it’s doing so.

There is no excuse for the new malignancy introduced into the Laken Riley Act by the United States Senate. Senators took a look at the bill passed by the US House, and decided it wasn’t outrageous enough. They amended the bill, not to make it more reasonable, not to protect foreigners here legally in the United States, not to protect children from being sent to prison camps. No, the US Senate amended H.R. 29 by adding a new provision that could lead to a foreigner being automatically sent to a prison camp without any trial, and this one chills me to the bone: Under the new Senate provision, which was approved by the US House and is now law, anyone who is not a US citizen can be sent to a prison camp merely because they have been accused of assaulting a police officer.

Assaulting a police officer is a very bad thing to do. That’s why so many Americans are outraged by Donald Trump’s decision to pardon violent criminal convicts who viciously attacked US Capitol police officers with baseball bats and tear gas, wooden beams and tasers. The criminals who Trump pardoned were American citizens, of course. In the new fascist America, American citizens who attack police officers are pardoned of their crime. Non-citizens who are merely accused of assaulting a police officer, however, are to be sent off to crowded prison camps.

Think of the following scenario: Police officers raid a college dormitory in an attempt to seize foreign students. The police officers begin to attack any students who get in their way, and arrest everyone in the dorm, falsely claiming that the students attacked them. Even though there is surveillance camera footage proving that the police attacked the students, and not vice versa, all the foreign students who were arrested will be sent to prison camps where not even the US Attorney General has the authority to approve their release. They will either be imprisoned for years on end, without criminal charge, or will be deported.

That’s what tough legislation looks like - strong but thoroughly stupid.

The problem with the Laken Riley Act is that it was written during an election year in order to score political points, rather than dealing with issues of immigration intelligently. I wish Josh Riley had not fallen for the hype. I wish he had spent more time thinking about whether the legislation makes sense, and less time trying to look tough.

Nazi Germany had a similar obsession with appearing to be tough, and that ended up making the Third Reich weak. Hitler frightened the world by waging all-out offenses against nearly every other nation in Europe, but the truth was that the German military never had the resources to sustain that level of aggression. The Nazis spread rapidly, but they couldn’t keep the territory they had gained. Fascists are experts at playing the bully, creating a tough appearance, but they are not thoughtful people. Their tough policies are designed to conceal serious conceptual flaws with a rush of emotional bluster.

That’s how the Laken Riley Act was passed, and it’s embarrassing to see that Congressman Josh Riley got caught up in the fascist excitement of it all. In his justifications of his vote for H.R. 29, Riley echoes the hype, saying on the radio that the bill addresses “things like burglary, various theft charges”, because words like “burglary” and “theft” sound frightening, evoking images of violent muggers attacking people on the street, or breaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night. The plain truth of it is that the text of the Laken Riley Act specifically targets shoplifters. Josh Riley avoided using the word “shoplifting” in his statements, because he knows that word exposes the absurdity of the legislation.

Of course, I don’t really know what’s in Josh Riley’s mind. What I know is that his statements about H.R. 29 contained a great deal of false information, but I can’t say for sure that Congressman Riley was lying on purpose. It’s possible that he didn’t actually read the legislation before he voted on it. Perhaps he had one of his aides read it for him, or paid a political consultant to summarize its campaign potential for him. Maybe Josh Riley scanned the language of the bill briefly while walking between meetings. I don’t know for sure.

What’s obvious is that Republican leadership in Congress rushed the bill to a roll call vote in a highly unusual way. At the very least, Josh Riley should have had the decency to refuse to vote for the legislation on those grounds.

Whether Josh Riley bothered to read the Laken Riley Act before he voted for it, he is going to have to educate himself about the new law and its consequences. That’s because Representative Riley’s constituents are reading the text of the legislation, and they’re growing increasingly outraged about it. Local elected officials and leaders of county Democratic committees are having anxious conversations behind closed doors about the problems that Josh Riley’s sudden move into pro-Trump legislation are creating in down ballot races. How, they’re asking, are they going to get people to come out to vote in 2026, when Josh Riley has so strongly broken the trust of rank-and-file Democrats throughout the district?

Josh Riley may think he’s being politically savvy by walking across the aisle to vote with Republicans, but it’s not centrist to vote with Republicans on extreme fascist legislation. If Congressman Riley wanted to appear bipartisan, he could have worked with a Republican member of the House Science Committee on legislation promoting microchip manufacturing, or something like that. He could have cooperated with a Republican colleague on the House Agriculture Committee to craft a bill on integrated pest management. There’s no problem with that kind of collaboration with Republicans. Everybody expects that.

A bill that can result in children being seized by ICE agents and sent off to a Homeland Security prison camp just for being wrongly accused of shoplifting a can of soda is not what anyone would call a reasonable middle ground. If Josh Riley wants to aim toward being a centrist, he could choose a tried-and-true bipartisan consensus that held true for generations: Fascism is not a good idea.

Concerns over the fascist example set by Josh Riley’s vote for the Laken Riley Act are not merely hypothetical anymore. Across the country, Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant raids are already terrorizing people with tactics that have nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. In New Jersey a few days ago, hundreds of people were seized by government agents and taken away as prisoners. The government refused to name who had been taken prisoner, refused to say what prison they had been sent to, and would not specify any charges against the prisoners, smashing our country’s habeas corpus rights to bits. In Chicago, ICE agents tried to enter a public elementary school to take immigrant children away while separated from their parents. Trump new Border Czar, Tom Homan, justified the raid and others like it by claiming that some of the children might be dangerous members of criminal gangs - children at an elementary school. In the Southwest, members of the Navajo nation have been seized and taken away by immigration agents, merely because their identification papers were issued by tribal authorities. You may be aware that the Navajo have lived on lands that are now within the United States for longer than there has been a country calling itself the United States.

Josh Riley’s vote for the Laken Riley Act did more than just create a specific, literal pathway for fascist government agents to violate the rights of people living in the United States. His vote also helped to legitimize other, even more broad violations of the Constitution. Josh Riley endorsed the sloppy fascist scapegoating of Donald Trump, signaling to the new president that Congress was not likely to stand up to even his most extreme abuses of power.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, of all days, a sitting member of Congress ought to be able to remember that sending millions of people off to overcrowded prison camps is never a reasonable thing to do. Josh Riley ought to have kept enough of a moral center to remember that war criminals should be prosecuted, not protected.

There’s a simple test that all members of Congress should apply to every piece of legislation before they vote on it. Let’s call it the Holocaust Test. Does the legislation make a repetition of the Holocaust more likely? If a proposed law would make a repetition of the Holocaust more likely, every member of Congress should vote against it.

Both H.R. 29 and H.R. 23 fail the Holocaust Test.

We remember the Holocaust not just because it is valuable to be familiar with history in some abstract way. We remember the Holocaust so that we will not repeat its mistakes.

Josh Riley says that he honors the memory of the Holocaust, but in practice, Josh Riley is repeating the mistakes that led the German people into a political culture of fear and hatred that enabled the Holocaust to take place. That dishonors the memory of the people who were killed and tortured during the Holocaust.

I would like to think that Representative Riley has realized the error of his support of fascist legislation. Perhaps that’s what he means when he refers to “recommitting to our duty to stand united against hatred, discrimination, and intolerance.”

It’s easy to issue a 34-word statement on social media. Taking action to resist fascism takes more courage.

Time will tell which side Josh Riley is on.

Nancy Cosens Searfoss offered this response to Josh Riley’s Facebook post about Holocaust Remembrance Day:

“Nice talk but apparently it’s just that. Back it up with right action. Your constituents are watching very closely.”

I agree with Nancy. Voters in the 19th congressional district are intelligent, and politically aware. Inconsistency between thought and deed won’t pass muster here.

The US House of Representative reopens tomorrow. We will be watching to see what Josh Riley does, and how that compares to what he says.