On January 20th, 2025 local time, the U.S. Senate passed the "Laken Riley Act" with a vote of 64 in favor and 35 against. On January 22th, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the first bill of this "Laken Riley Act", with a vote of 263 in favor and 156 against. After being passed by both houses, the "Laken Riley Act" will become the first bill signed by Trump after returning to the White House.
On January 24th, local time, US President Trump stated that he would sign the "Laken Riley Act".
U.S. President Trump has taken office again with unprecedented success. As a core issue during his campaign and as a focus of the executive order he just issued, immigration has attracted much attention from all parties. Currently, Trump has achieved an initial victory on the immigration issue with Congress passing the Laken Riley Act.
Laken Riley Act would require illegal immigrants arrested for theft or violent crimes to be held in jail pending trial. The bill is named for Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was murdered by a Venezuelan man last year.
In February 2024, Ms. Riley, 22, was found dead in woods on the University of Georgia campus after failing to return from a morning run. The immigrant convicted of her murder had been arrested twice in New York and Georgia in the months before the murder but was released before trial.
The Laken Riley Act passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives last year but failed to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate at the time. The bill passed with bipartisan support on Wednesday, just days after the balance of power in the Senate shifted to Republican control.
The bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain immigrants when they are charged with certain criminal offenses, including theft, burglary, assault on a law enforcement officer or any offense that results in "the death or serious bodily injury of another person."
The bill also empowers state attorneys general to sue the federal government if residents believe they have been harmed by state immigration policies.
Speaking before the vote, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said that in the last Congress, Democrats showed "they have no intention of standing up for women who have been assaulted by people who enter the country illegally."
"The majority in the House remains intact, but now we have a willing partner in the Senate who truly wants to address the real problems families face so there are no more Laken Riley incidents and no more innocent people are being killed because of open borders,” he added.
According to a study by the National Institute of Justice, illegal immigrants in the United States are less than half as likely as native-born citizens to be arrested for violent and drug crimes.
