Just over 48 hours into his second term, Congress sent President Donald Trump a bill that will crackdown on illegal immigration upon being signed into law.
The House voted 263-156 with 46 Democratic lawmakers joining House Republicans to advance the Laken Riley Act to Trump’s desk. The House’s bipartisan approval of the bill comes after the Senate passed the Laken Riley Act 64-35 Monday with 12 Democratic lawmakers, led by bill sponsors — Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Ruben Gallego of Arizona — supporting the legislation.
The Laken Riley Act is named in honor of a University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an illegal immigrant while out on a run near her college campus in February 2024. The legislation requires federal immigration authorities to detain illegal migrants who commit theft-related crimes in the United States. The bill also allows state attorneys general to sue the federal government over failing to enforce immigration law, a provision the majority of Democratic lawmakers who voted against the bill opposed.
The Senate adopted two amendments to the Laken Riley Act from Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Joni Ernst of Iowa prior to sending the legislation to the House for approval. Both amendments expanded the list of offenses requiring detention of illegal migrants, including assault of a law enforcement officer and crimes that result in death or serious bodily injury.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s agreement to prioritize the Laken Riley Act at the start of the 119th Congress is a reflection of voters rejecting open borders in November, Republican Rep. Mike Collins, the lead sponsor of the Laken Riley Act in the House, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It was the first bill that went through the House. It’s the first bill that went through the Senate,” Collins told the DCNF. “The American people were demanding that something passed, and something happened.”
The Laken Riley Act’s bipartisan support in the Senate is a stark departure from last Congress during which the bill died in the Democratic-controlled Senate following just 37 House Democrats voting with their Republican colleagues to advance the legislation in March 2024.
A majority of left-wing Democratic lawmakers, including Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fiercely opposed the Laken Riley Act and slammed the bill for stripping illegal migrants of due process, dubbing the legislation a “fundamental erosion of civil rights.
“If a person [illegal migrant] is so much accused of a crime, if someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court,” Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said during floor debate on the bill.
Proponents of the Laken Riley Act repeatedly argued that if legislation had been signed into law prior to Riley’s death, her killer, Venezuelan national Jose Antonio Ibarra, would have been deported upon being arrested during a shoplifting incident at a Walmart in Athens, Georgia prior to murdering Riley.
ICE would be required to detain illegal migrants like Ibarra who are charged with committing theft-related crimes and those resulting in assault of a law enforcement officer or leading to death or serious bodily injury, according to the Senate-amended bill text that passed the House.
“If the Laken Riley Act would have been law of the land last year, she would still be alive with us today,” Collins told the DCNF in an interview Tuesday.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s inquiry about whether Trump plans to sign the legislation into law.
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