Democrats signal openness to Republicans’ Laken Riley Act with key vote

Bill may pass, led by Republicans, without amendments after Democratic resistance vanishes

A key immigration enforcement measure could be on track for passage thanks to Democrats crossing party lines to support it.

The failure of the Democratic Party’s leadership and standard-bearers to present a winning message on immigration reform in 2024 is coming back to bite outgoing President Joe Biden.

With days left of his presidency and the fight to define his legacy begun, his allies in Congress are seemingly prepared to compromise with the GOP on a bill that would direct immigration authorities to detain any undocumented person charged with theft.

The legislation, which is named after a woman slain by an undocumented Venezuelan migrant, would represent a major messaging victory for Republicans to ring in the new year were it to be passed. But Americans’ anger over inaction on the issue has given the GOP a political opening, and the bill won dozens of Democratic votes as it passed the House last week.

In the Senate, the bill easily passed a key vote to allow debate to begin next week. Democrats signaled Wednesday that they’d vote for cloture after John Thune, the GOP’s new majority leader, allowed amendments to the bill. The vote was 84-9 in favor.

Chuck Schumer, leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, joined all but a handful of his party in voting to advance the Laken Riley Act to the floor for debate on Thursday. (Getty Images)

The debate on amendments could be contentious. However, multiple media outlets reported on Thursday that numerous Democrats are prepared to vote for the bill as is, meaning that a filibuster may not materialize even if all of the Democratic-sponsored amendments fail. Part of that stemmed from the decision of two relative newcomers to the chamber, John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego, to cosponsor the Act before any amendments were announced.

Gallego told reporters on Thursday that voters in November made clear their expectations for Congress and the White House to work together and address America’s overwhelmed immigration system.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be this bill, but I do think that there is a general consensus that has come from the voters,” Gallego told The Independent ahead of the vote. “They want us to work together.”

President Biden and the White House have been virtually silent on the issue. With just 11 days until he turns over the keys to the Oval Office back to Trump, administration officials acknowledge that tougher border and migrant policies are back in vogue.

At least one such official — Biden’s outgoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director, P.J. Lechleitner — is speaking out against the lax way the outgoing administration handled migration policy. He told NBC News that he and other career DHS officials would’ve preferred that the border restrictions Biden imposed this past June had come much earlier in the president’s term.

In an interview, he told the network that Biden “absolutely” should’ve acted more quickly to stem the migrant flows.

“I think the career people in DHS would have liked that — and all of us in DHS, quite frankly, I don’t know if anybody in DHS wouldn’t have wanted that earlier,” he said.

Privately, White House aides don’t disagree with the sentiment. It is understood that among those close to the president, there’s long been a sense of frustration over how the Democratic Party’s full-throated resistance to Trump over his first term effectively poisoned the well and made it impossible for Biden to take a tougher line even as record numbers of asylum seekers poured over the border and overwhelmed both border communities and the urban strongholds where GOP governors began sending the migrants for political effect.

When Biden came into office after a 2020 election win seen as a repudiation of Trump, anything with even a whiff of restrictionism risked setting off alarm bells with migrant rights groups who weren’t shy about stoking progressive anger.

While some in the leftward reaches of the Democratic Party are still pushing against the GOP-authored bill, congressional leaders have not been actively whipping votes against the legislation or speaking out in opposition.  Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, voted to advance the bill to the floor on Thursday over opposition from some progressives.

Progressives decried the lack of resistance from their party. Opponents of the legislation say that the beginning or completion of deportation processes before an undocumented person is convicted of a crime represents violations of due process rights.

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent on Thursday that she hoped to see more resistance from her party in the Senate next week.

Freshman Senator Ruben Gallego was one of two Democrats to come out as a co-sponsor of the Laken Riley Act this week. (AFP via Getty Images)

“What people need to understand is that if we start…rounding people up just based on an accusation of a crime, remove people’s day in court, eliminate the basic constitutional rights...that’s the beginning of the end when it comes to … the erosion of our civil liberties in America.”

The bill’s supporters include Republicans including president-elect Donald Trump who have raised fears about a supposed “migrant crime wave”, which experts and conviction statistics say is wholly imaginary. The killing of Laken Riley and other crimes committed by migrants have received massive media attention, and fueled those fears.

But they also include Democrats in purple districts and states answering to voters shocked by images of massive groups of migrants bound for the US border which have been displayed across rightwing and mainstream media alike.

Concerns about ongoing criminal cartel violence in Mexico and Central America remain high in border states as well, especially given the dominance of those groups over routes used by migrants aiming to cross the border illegally.

One of the battleground state Democrats due to support the bill — with or without amendments — was Michigan’s newly-elected Elissa Slotkin.

She noted on Twitter, however: “No matter what, this bill certainly doesn’t address the root causes of our broken immigration system, which we need to do to ever truly deal with immigration issues writ large in this country.”

“In the Senate, I will work with anyone – anyone! – who is serious about real immigration reform that secures our southern border and stops the flow of fentanyl, keys our immigration system to the real needs of our economy, and lives up to our American values,” said Slotkin.