Senate passes Laken Riley Act in first move after Trump inauguration

The Senate on Monday passed the Laken Riley Act, making the immigration-related bill the first piece of legislation to make it through the upper chamber in the new Congress and putting it a step closer to being signed into law by President Trump.

Senators voted 64-35 on the bill. Twelve Democrats voted with every Republican.

The legislation — which mandates the federal detention of immigrants without legal status who are accused of theft and burglary, among other things — was a priority for Republicans after immigration emerged as a signature issue for Trump and an effective cudgel against Democrats in November.

“This legislation will ensure that illegal aliens who steal or assault a law enforcement officer are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement instead of being allowed out on the streets,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said on the floor ahead of the vote. “I’m looking forward to getting this legislation to the president’s desk.”

Democrats who voted in the affirmative included Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Raphael Warnock (Ga.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Mark Warner (Va.).

The bill is named after Laken Riley, a college student who was killed almost a year ago in Athens, Ga., by a Venezuelan migrant who had been arrested for shoplifting ahead of the attack and paroled in the U.S.

Final passage came after more than a week of work dedicated to the bill on the Senate floor.

Democrats, still smarting from their defeat at the ballot box, twice voted overwhelmingly to open debate on the measure in the hopes of amending it.

But they were largely left empty-handed as the chamber only voted on three amendments and only adopted two. The chamber last week approved a proposal from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to add the assault of a law enforcement officer to the list of offenses that would lead to detainment.

And prior to final passage on Monday, Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) amendment, known as Sarah’s Law, was approved in a 75-24 vote. The item expands the bill to include the detainment of migrants without legal status charged with crimes causing death or serious bodily injury.

The Ernst proposal is named after Sarah Root, who was killed in a 2016 car crash that involved a migrant without legal status who proceeded to post bond and flee the U.S.

The only Democratic amendment considered would have cut out part of the bill that hands state attorneys general authority to sue federal immigration officials over detentions.

On top of the increased power given to state attorneys general, Democrats were also worried about the provision allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants upon arrest, rather than conviction, and the cost of the proposal.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the bill is estimated to cost nearly $27 billion to implement during the first year, and it would be extremely difficult to enforce due to a lack of resources.

“This bill makes the country less safe, not more safe. It’s a joke,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator on the bipartisan border deal that was spurned by conservatives last year. “It claims to be locking people up and then allocates no money to do that, so the situation doesn't change.”

The bill now heads to the House to be greenlighted before it goes to Trump’s desk. Forty-eight House Democrats voted for the proposal earlier this month, but the Senate voted on a different version of the Laken Riley Act, meaning it needs to pass the lower chamber once more.

The bill also split Senate Democrats, as lawmakers found themselves in “intense” internal discussions about how to handle the bill, a pair of members told The Hill.

Among the problems they ran into was an early wave of support from members in battleground states that effectively hurt the negotiating posture of leadership.

“I've spent a lot of energy trying to show how Democrats care deeply about border security,” Murphy said. “I just think we’ve got to be engaged in a collective exercise to prove to the American people that we care more about border security than they do — but do that on our terms, not their terms.”

The legislative push comes after years of Republicans going on the offense politically against the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border and record numbers of migrants who entered the country.

Democrats tried to make amends on the issue with the bipartisan bill Murphy and other senators were involved in, but it never moved the needle for the party ahead of November.

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