The House on Wednesday gave final approval to a bill that requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes, marking the first legislation that the president Donald Trump May sign as Congress, with some bipartisan support, moved quickly to comply with his plans to crack down on illegal immigration.
The passage of the Laken Riley Act, which was named after a Georgia nursing student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan, shows how much the political debate over immigration has shifted toward the right after Trump’s electoral victory. Immigration policy has often been one of the most entrenched issues in Congress, but a crucial faction of 46 politically vulnerable Democrats joined with Republicans to raise the strict passage proposal on a 263-156 vote count.
“For decades, it has been nearly impossible for our government to agree on solutions for the problems at our border and across our country,” said Sen. Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama. She called the legislation “perhaps the most important immigration enforcement bill” to pass Congress in nearly three decades.
Still, the bill would require a massive increase in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement capabilities but includes no new funding.
Meanwhile, the new president issued a slew of executive orders intended to seal Mexico’s border to immigration and ultimately expel millions of immigrants without permanent legal status in the United States. On Wednesday, Trump also canceled resettlement of refugees and its administration has signaled intentions to PROFORM LOCAL RENTAL OFFICERS WITH REFORMS THAT DO NOT FORCE PROPOSALS OF THE NEW IMMIGRATION POLICIES.
Republican congressional leaders have made clear they intend to follow suit, although their toughest challenge is finding a way to approve funding to actually implement Trump’s hard-line plans .
Get daily national news
Get the day’s best news, politics, business and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
“What he’s doing is launching what will ultimately be our legislative agenda,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA.
House Republicans initially passed the legislation last year with the support of 37 Democrats in a move that was intended to deliver a political rebuke to then-President Joe Biden’s handling of the southern border. It then languished in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
This year, Republicans, now with control of both houses of Congress, have made it their top priority. When it came before the Senate, 12 Democrats voted to pass it, and when the House voted on a version of the bill earlier this month, 48 Democrats supported it.
The vast majority of American adults favor immigrants convicted of violent crimes, according to a recent survey by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research. However, only about 37% of American adults support deporting immigrants in the United States illegally who have not been convicted of a crime.
“While the bill is not perfect, it sends a clear message that we believe criminals should be deported,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, a New York Democrat who has called on his party to support enforcement. immigration more difficult.
Under the legislation, federal authorities would be required to detain any migrant arrested or charged with crimes like shoplifting. The scope of the proposal was expanded in the Senate to also include those accused of assaulting a police officer or crimes that injure or kill someone.
The bill also grants legal standing to state attorneys general to sue the federal government for harm caused by federal immigration decisions. This gives states new power in setting immigration policy after they have already tried to push back on presidential decisions under the Trump and Biden administrations. Democrats unsuccessfully pushed to have the provision removed from the bill in the Senate, saying it would inject even more uncertainty and partisanship into immigration policy.
Ultimately, even the Trump administration is expected to have difficulty implementing the new requirements unless Congress follows up later this year with funding. Republicans are currently strategizing how to push their priorities through Congress through a party process known as budget reconciliation. They put the cost of funding border priorities and deporting Trump at around $100 billion.
Trump has “established the largest domestic logistics undertaking of our lifetimes — which is the deportation of the vast majority of illegal aliens in the United States,” said Ken Cuccinelli, who headed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. immigration during Trump’s first presidency, at a Senate Panel recently.
Cuccinelli said it would require a wave of immigration judges, prosecutors and other staff, but Trump also paved the way for using military troops, bases and other resources to carry out the mass deportations.
The Department of Homeland Security estimated that the Laken Riley Act would cost $26.9 billion in the first year to implement, including an increase of 110,000 ice detention beds.
Most Democrats have criticized the lack of funding in the bill as evidence that it is a piecemeal approach that would do little to solve problems in the immigration system, but federal officials saddle with new requirements.
“The authors of the bill claimed this was going to result in the arrest and detention of serious criminals, but it wouldn’t do that because it’s a completely unfunded mandate,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D- Conn.
Others have raised concerns that the bill would take away due process rights for migrants, including minors or recipients of the Deferred Action for Unaccompanied Arrivals program. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said federal authorities would now be forced to prioritize the detention of migrants arrested for low-level offenses like shoplifting, rather than those who commit violent crimes.
Overall, there is no evidence that immigrants are more prone to violent crime. Several studies have found that immigrants commit lower rates of crime than those born in the U.S. Groups that advocate for restrictive immigration policies dispute or reject these findings.
But Republicans pointed to the bill’s namesake, Laken Riley, and how she was killed by a Venezuelan migrant who had previously been arrested by local authorities but released as he continued his immigration case.
“If this act had been the law of the land, he never would have had the opportunity to kill her,” said Rep. Mike Collins, R-GA.