Washington — The Senate appears poised to advance a bill that would expand the federal government’s mandate to detain immigrants who are in the country illegally, with Republicans putting the issue front and center in the new Congress.
The bill marks the first policy legislation of the new Congress, and the House approved it in a bipartisan vote on Tuesday.
Under current law, the Department of Homeland Security is mandated to detain noncitizens convicted of certain crimes, including “aggravated felonies,” or serious offenses like murder and sexual assault. The Laken Riley Act would expand mandatory detention to include noncitizens convicted of or charged with burglary, larceny, theft or shoplifting, as well as those who admit to committing those crimes.
Whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement could fully enforce this new mandate without more funding is an open question. The agency is currently using roughly 39,000 of 41,000 detention beds funded by Congress.
The legislation would also empower state attorneys general who claim their state or its residents have been harmed by immigration policies to sue the federal government.
The bill is named after Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant last year. A judge convicted the man, Jose Ibarra, on murder and other charges related to Riley’s death in November.
The upper chamber is set to vote on advancing the measure Thursday afternoon in a key procedural hurdle with a 60-vote threshold. And while the new GOP majority in the Senate falls short of that number, with 52 Senate Republicans in attendance this week, a growing list of Democrats have publicly announced their plans to support the Republican-led measure, including Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. Fetterman is a co-sponsor in the Senate, and Gallego and Slotkin both voted for the legislation as members of the House last year.
On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer chimed in, saying ahead of the vote that he would vote to advance the legislation and that he expects it to have enough votes to move forward. Still, he stressed that Democrats want to have a “robust debate” when they can offer amendments on the bill.
“This is an important issue,” Schumer said. “We should have a debate and amendments and that’s why I am voting yes on the motion to proceed.”
The House first approved the legislation last year, but it stalled in the then-Democratic controlled Senate. This week, 48 House Democrats joined all voting Republicans to approve the measure — up from 37 who did so last year — despite pushback from some Democrats who have argued that the bill is merely political posturing.
Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican and the new majority whip, encouraged bipartisan support for the legislation on Thursday, saying it’s “nice to see that the results of the election in November have changed the thinking of some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle.”
“I’m happy to hear that Democrats are now open to debating this important bill,” Barrasso said, though he argued that debating it isn’t enough and “the Senate must go on to pass it.”
contributed to this report.
