Senate Dems join with Republicans to break filibuster on immigrant crime bill
WASHINGTON – Several Senate Democrats from swing states joined with Republicans Friday to clear the final hurdle to passing the Laken Riley Act, which would require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain noncitizens who commit certain crimes.
It comes after a bruising election season for Democrats, who lost both the White House and Senate and failed to flip the House. Democrats from key swing states have argued it's time for the party to do more to address voters' concerns on immigration.
The Senate voted 61-35 to advance the bill, clearing the 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome the filibuster. The chamber plans to pass the bill on Monday, and will only need a majority vote at that time. It will then go back to the House, where it will likely be approved, before sending it to President-elect Donald Trump's desk to be signed.
The bill would require federal officials to detain immigrants in the country illegally who have been charged with or convicted of theft-related crimes, including burglary, theft, larceny and shoplifting, or who have been accused of assault on a law enforcement officer.
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It's named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered by a Venezuelan immigrant in Georgia in February 2024. House Republicans have been pushing the legislation since March of last year, but it was not taken up by the then-Democratically-controlled Senate.
ICE is already authorized to detain noncitizens with final removal orders, as well as those charged with or convicted of a crime. Under the Biden administration, ICE has been asked to focus its limited resources on noncitizens with serious criminal records or those who represent a public safety or national security threat.
With an annual budget of $9 billion, ICE's roughly 6,000 enforcement and removal officers manage a caseload of more than 7 million noncitizens – including more than 662,000 with criminal convictions or charges.
The agency's detention capacity is sharply limited: There are 41,500 congressionally-funded beds in ICE detention centers nationwide, and experts say the agency would need Congress to massively scale up resources for detention and ICE personnel. The Laken Riley bill doesn't appropriate new funding.
Immigrant and civil liberties advocates raised concerns over the bill's provisions that would require ICE agents to detain broad categories of noncitizens and give states the right to sue its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, if ICE fails to do so.
"This legislation overrides the discretion that individual immigration officers and judges have about who is a risk to the community or a flight risk," said Sarah Mehta, senior policy counsel at the ACLU in New York.
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The 10 Democratic senators who joined with their GOP counterparts to advance the bill were largely from swing states: Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of New Mexico, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Mark Warner of Virginia.
"Arizonans know better than most the real consequences of today’s border crisis," Gallego said in a post on X. "We must give law enforcement the means to take action to prevent tragedies like what occurred to Laken Riley."
He and Sen. Jon Fetterman, D-Pa., co-sponsored the bill with GOP Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama and most of the Senate's other Republicans, though Fetterman did not vote Friday.
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"If you're here illegally and you're committing crimes, I don't know why anybody thinks it's controversial that they all need to go," Fetterman told Fox News earlier this month. Asked whether immigration was the biggest issue in the election, he said: "I think if we can't pull up with seven votes (to overcome the filibuster) then that's one of the reasons why we lost."
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Thursday the bill will cost up to $83 billion in the first three years to implement, more than Homeland Security’s current annual budget.
Laura St. John, legal director at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, called the bill "dangerous and unprecedented" in a statement earlier this month.
“This bill would require the government to imprison an entire class of people – in this case, undocumented immigrants – without any right to a bond hearing or individualized assessment with a judge, based on mere allegations of wrongdoing," she said.
In October, the American Immigration Council estimated it could cost $88 billion to deport 1 million people a year under current immigration law.
In the modern era, no presidential administration has reached that level. At the peak in 2012, President Barack Obama reported more than 400,000 removals. During Trump's highest year, the administration reported roughly 267,000 removals.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Senate Democrats help GOP clear filibuster on Laken Riley Act