I previously reported that the House overwhelmingly passed H.R. 29, the “Laken Riley Act” — the first bill considered on the floor in the new 119th Congress — on January 7, with 48 Democrats joining all their voting GOP colleagues supporting the bill. A companion version of the bill, S. 5, passed a key procedural test in the Senate on January 9, as 31 Democrats joining all voting Republican senators in supporting a cloture motion that will allow the bill to proceed for debate. It still has a ways to go before it ends up on the president’s desk — so watch out for amendments.
Simply because those Democratic senators voted for cloture does not mean they’ll vote for final passage, though there appears to be sufficient support at this point for the bill to pass, particularly given that Democratic Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.) and Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) are cosponsoring the legislation.
The real action in the Upper Chamber will likely come next, during the amendment process.
A spokesperson for Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), for example, told Capitol Hill tipsheet The Hill that he “does not support the Laken Riley Act in its current form”, but wants to vote to move forward to amend it.
Sen. Jon Ossoff, Democrat from Georgia — Riley’s home state, which Donald Trump won by just over two points in November — wants to “see where the process goes” in the Senate, while Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) stated that she has “real concerns” about S. 5, “not the least of which is it’s an unfunded mandate”.
I would question whether a bill that would take alien criminals off the streets and into DHS custody quite qualifies as an “unfunded mandate”, but it would — if passed and implemented — likely require an increase in ICE detention beds at a time that enhanced border enforcement will probably fill a lot of bed space as well.
Then there’s Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who explained: “Everyone’s got to make their decisions. ... We’ve accepted the need to do serious reform on immigration. A lot of us supported the bipartisan immigration bill that was pretty heavy on enforcement.” I would respectfully disagree with that latter point.
A number of enforcement-minded experts I have spoken to have two separate concerns about the bill.
The first is that congressional Democrats will support passage of some version of the bill and then use it to contend that additional legislation isn’t necessary.
While I personally think that the current iteration of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides the president and DHS with the authority they need to bring illegal immigration under control, there are plenty of ways that the INA could be amended that would facilitate enforcement and curb abuses.
The second concern is that the bill will be used as a vehicle to provide additional benefits to aliens — legalization of DACA recipients and spouses in so-called “mixed status” marriages, etc. — that certain Republicans may not understand but support anyway, because they sound “reasonable”.
There is always a danger when legislation moves too quickly in Washington that members and senators will get caught up in the optics of a proposal and miss (or misread) the fine print — to their detriment and the country’s.
That plainly could have happened with the “bipartisan immigration bill”, aka: the “Senate border bill” Sen. Welch was referencing. The “enforcement” provisions in that bill were not only weak, but worse they were coupled with amendments that would have made securing the border a more onerous task while leaving the port of entry doors open for thousands of new illegal migrants monthly.
In any event, don’t be surprised to hear the words “comprehensive immigration reform” bandied about in connection with the amendment process for S. 5. You might ask, who doesn’t think the INA needs a massive redo? In a vacuum, it may be a great idea, but when those three words appear together, they inevitably mean “amnesty”.
One issue that I am not entirely clear about is how Congress will square the two versions of the Laken Riley Act — H.R. 29 and S. 5 — if the latter passes the Senate. Technically, they are two separate bills, each requiring passage by both houses.
On that point, expect the House to take up — and potentially amend — whatever version of S. 5 passes the Senate. If passed with amendments in the House, the bill would then go to a conference committee where, ideally, experts can hash out the finer points and present a final version for passage.
If there is one clear takeaway from the bipartisan support the Laken Riley Act has received in the House and the Senate, it’s that a large number of our elected representatives read the election results and understand voters are fed up with migrant crime. If only they had reached that conclusion sooner.