By Mariana Alfaro, Marianne LeVine · The Washington Post (c) 2025
A bill that would allow the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of theft-related crimes is heading to President Donald Trump’s desk after passing the House on Wednesday, the first part of the president’s plan to overhaul immigration policy.
The Laken Riley Act, named in memory of a nursing student killed in February by an undocumented immigrant in Georgia, would also allow state attorneys general to sue the federal government over immigration policy. The House voted 263-156 to pass it, with 46 Democrats joining Republicans.
The bill’s passage is an early win for Trump, who made the border a central part of his presidential campaign. It marks an awkward turnaround for Democrats, some of whom initially opposed the measure but changed their position after the election.
Last week, Senate Republicans passed the measure with the support of 12 Democratic colleagues – despite warnings from immigrant-rights groups, legal experts and other Democrats that the measure would do away with undocumented immigrants’ right to due process after being accused of a crime and potentially unleash chaos by allowing state authorities to challenge long-standing federal immigration law.
Of the 12 Senate Democrats who supported the bill, nine are from states that Trump won in November, and three – Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire, and Mark R. Warner (Virginia) – are from purple states where Trump made significant inroads among voters.
In the House, 48 House Democrats supported the initial version of the bill – 11 more than when the bill was first brought to the floor last year. In the final vote, 46 House Democrats supported the legislation. Some Democrats flipped their votes from earlier this month. Democratic Reps. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. (Georgia) and Eugene Vindman (Virginia) voted to support, while Reps. Chris Deluzio (Pennsylvania) and Val Hoyle (Oregon) voted against it.
“Donald Trump has been able to twist the Democratic Party’s position on immigration into a caricature of itself,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), who voted against the final Laken Riley bill after he attempted to amend it. “But it has not helped that the Democratic Party is not as clear as we should be about the principles that we support for a more comprehensive immigration bill.”
Demands for more restrictive border security and immigration reform drove many voters to the polls in November and hurt the party’s results across the board. And Trump has long seized on scattered cases of violence involving immigrants, including Riley’s, to misleadingly portray large numbers of undocumented immigrants as being violent or dangerous.
But there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a higher rate than U.S. citizens. A September 2024 study funded by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes, and at a quarter of the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.
While polls show widespread support for deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, most Americans oppose deporting individuals who have lived in the United States for a long time and have no criminal record. A January AP/NORC poll found that while 82 percent of Americans favor deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally who have been convicted of a violent crime, only 37 percent support deporting all immigrants living in the United States illegally who have not been convicted of a violent crime.
“The Democratic position has been clear, maybe we need to make it clearer,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) before the final vote. “We want a secure border, we want to make it much, much more difficult to get into the country illegally and we want to make it much easier to get into the country lawfully.”
Some Democrats warned last week against the Laken Riley Act’s provisions that would revoke immigrants’ rights to due process – Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey), for example, said the measure’s requirement for mandatory detention without bond for nonviolent misdemeanors like shoplifting “goes against our Constitution.” But a majority of Democrats voted to advance the bill in its initial stages despite opposing the measure as originally written.
At the time, the Democrats, led by Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), said they voted to advance the measure because they wanted to have an opportunity to amend it.
But it quickly became clear that Republicans would not entertain Democratic amendments. No Democratic amendment made it to the final version of the bill, including several that would have protected minors who are Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipients from detention under the measure and some that would’ve required a preliminary hearing to determine if detention was appropriate.
“We told Republicans we wanted to have a serious and productive and fruitful debate on this legislation, with the chance to vote on amendments to modify the bill … but unfortunately our Republican colleagues, and the Republican leader, didn’t reach an agreement with us,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Friday. “We Democrats want to see our broken immigration system fixed. … While I do not support this particular bill, I stand ready to work with both sides to pass smart, effective and common sense legislation to secure our borders and reform our immigration system.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have been eager to talk about their early success in quickly pushing ahead the Laken Riley Act and squeezing Democrats on the issue.
“Ithink it’s significant that you look at the contrast between last Congress, where we passed the same bill, and Chuck Schumer made it clear that in the Democratic Senate, they had no desire to stand up for women who are assaulted by people here illegally,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Wednesday ahead of the vote. “But now with [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune … you now have a willing partner in the Senate that actually wants to confront real problems.”
Experts warned that the bill would unleash more lawsuits over immigration policy.
Heidi Altman, director of federal advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, told The Washington Post that the bill allows any state attorney general to essentially have standing “to bring a case and have it heard against the federal government for any immigration policy that they don’t like with regard to large swaths of federal immigration law, including detention policy, certain aspects of visa policy and the issuance of parole.”
She also said undocumented immigrants could “end up stuck indefinitely in immigration jail or prison without opportunity to even ask for a bond hearing.”
Ezra Levin, co-director of the advocacy group Indivisible Project, said Democrats “are already regretting giving too much too fast to Senate Republicans on the Laken Riley Act.”
“The only hope for MAGA’s corrupt, chaotic, and unconstitutional agenda is a fast legislative process that moves before public opposition can build,” Levin said. “Dems shouldn’t give it to them.”
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Emily Guskin and Eric Lau contributed to this report.