House passes Laken Riley Act with stronger bipartisan support than last time

author Published by Jeremy Beck

“If you’re here illegally and you’re committing crimes and those things, I don’t know why anybody thinks that it’s controversial that they all need to go….There’s 47 of us in the Senate. And if we can’t pull up with seven votes. If we can’t get at least 7 out of 47, if we can’t, then that’s the reason why we lost.” Sen. Fetterman (D-PA) talking to the 46 other Members of the Democratic Caucus.

After four years of the largest wave of immigration in history, voters delivered a decisive immigration election in 2024. The border crisis was the insult to the injury of sixty years of broken promises; promises to set limits; promises to enforce them. Voters’ message to Washington: lower the numbers and make us believe it.

If anything, the public’s desire to address immigration has increased since the election. The most recent polling results are unequivocal: Immigration Is The Top Priority.

The obvious place to start is restoring credible enforcement, without which policymakers risk losing American’s faith in immigration itself. The Laken Riley Act is, as Sen. Fetterman called it, a “common sense” bill that would represent a modest step toward that goal by giving states whose residents have been victimized by illegal immigration the ability to sue the federal government for failing to faithfully execute immigration laws (the bill also requires detainers on inadmissible aliens arrested for a variety of theft crimes).

House passes Laken Riley Act with stronger bipartisan support than last time

The Laken Riley Act is named after the young nursing student who was murdered by a man who was in the country illegally and, prior to the murder, had been released by the Border Patrol through a Biden administration program, and subsequently encountered police in New York for endangering a minor, and again Georgia for shoplifting. The federal government never took him into custody.

In the last Congress that ended earlier this month, the Laken Riley Act passed the House with bipartisan support (37 Democrats voted for it). The Senate received the bill last March but Democratic leadership never brought it up for a vote.

This Tuesday, the House passed the re-introduced Laken Riley Act (H.R. 29) 264-159. This time, 48 Democrats joined 216 Republicans in passing the bill. Zero Republicans voted against the measure; 159  Democrats opposed it; 11 members did not vote.

Among the “yes” votes were 42 newly elected representatives, including twelve freshmen Democrats: 

Figures (D-AL)
Gray (D-CA)
Min (D-CA)
Tran (D-CA)
Whitesides (D-CA)
McDonald Rivet (D-MI)
Goodlander (D-NH)
Gillen (D-NY)
Mannion (D-NY)
Riley (D-NY)
Bynum (D-OR)
Subramanyam (D-VA)

Many of the D’s who voted “Yes” represent competitive purple districts, but others are in relatively safe seats and still voted for the measure, including representatives Boyle (D-PA), Courtney (D-CT) and Sewell (D-AL).

Some of the Democrats who supported the bill clearly had the November elections on their mind.

“We need to take a different approach with immigration.” said Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL).

“What happened in South Texas tells you a lot,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), referring to the majority-Hispanic districts that turned red in November for issues including immigration.

The Senate defied expectations

As Sen. Fetterman’s quote above indicated, for the Laken Riley Act to have a chance in the Senate, it needed at least 7 (actually 8) Democrats to vote in favor of cloture. There was some doubt about whether that would happen. On Thursday, however, 36 Democrats and one Independent joined 47 Republicans to overwhelmingly move the bill toward a final vote.

While 23% of the House Democrats broke ranks to help the bill along, 80% of Democratic Senators did!

Only nine Senators (all Democrats) voted against cloture:

Corey Booker (D-NJ)
Mazie HIrono (D-HI)
Andy Kim (D-NJ)
Ed Markey (D-MA)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Brian Schatz (D-HI)
Tina Smith (D-MN)
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Six Senators did not cast a vote:

Hassan (D-NH)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murphy (D-CT)
Murray (D-WA)
Padilla (D-CA)
Schiff (D-CA)

“Laken Riley’s story is a tragic reminder of what’s at stake when our systems fail to protect people,” Sen. Fetterman (D-PA) said in a statement . “No family should have to endure the pain of losing a loved one to preventable violence. Immigration is what makes our country great. I support giving authorities the tools to prevent tragedies like this one while we work on comprehensive solutions to our broken system.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-PA) said he was voting “yes” because he supported “border security and keeping Americans safe.”

Sen. Gallego (D-AZ) said : “Arizonans know the real-life consequences of today’s border crisis,” Gallego told Fox News Digital in a statement. “We must give law enforcement the means to take action when illegal immigrants break the law, to prevent situations like what occurred to Laken Riley.”

Senate passage is not guaranteed

Many of the Democrats who voted for cloture have indicated that they do not support the bill as it is currently written. But amendments to the bill could scuttle it.

The Laken Riley Act – a good bill – is truly a first-step measure, which makes the opposition to it all the more baffling. Jim Geraghty writes in the Washington Post:

“Critics of the bill decry it as a violation of due process because it addresses criminal charges, not convictions. But those detained under the Laken Riley Act would already be subject to prosecution and deportation for illegally entering the country, and would be punished on those grounds. The legislation simply treats the other criminal charges as an added incentive for the government to do its duty.

“Yes, it is possible that a detainee might have been wrongly charged with burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting and ultimately exonerated, but that doesn’t alter the fact that if you’re not supposed to be in this country, then you’re not supposed to be in this country!”

The Significance of Sixty

One of the biggest – if not the biggest – obstacles to reducing immigration back to a level that can sustain economic mobility and environmental quality of life for all Americans is the necessity of finding 60 Senators to vote for legislation that will do so. Until last week, that hadn’t happend in over a decade.

Votes are forever

The votes in the House and Senate this week were the first of what we hope will be many votes in the 119th Congress to lower overall immigration through legal reductions and credible enforcement reforms. Just getting a vote is arduous work. And we know we won’t win all of the votes. But the value of getting politicians on record cannot be underestimated. Voting records tell the true stories of lawmakers’ commitment to an immigration policy that serves the national interest.

The story of the 119th Congress is just beginning to unfold.


See also: Immigration-Reduction Grade Cards


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