Photo: Alamy
The Laken Riley Act passed through the filibuster threshold Thursday after 84 U.S. Senators voted to advance it to a final vote in a rare show of bipartisanship.
If passed, this bill, written and introduced by Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., and Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., would instruct the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain immigrants illegally living in the country who commit theft-related crimes until deportation.
Additionally, state attorneys would be given standing to organize civil litigation against Department of Homeland Security members who fail to enforce immigration laws.
The bill was named for the 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley, who was murdered last February while jogging at the University of Georgia’s campus.
Her killer, 26-year-old Jose Ibarra, illegally crossed the southern U.S. border in 2022. After Biden administration officials apprehended him, he was subsequently released into the U.S. and housed at New York City’s luxurious Roosevelt Hotel, according to the New York Post.
Ignoring the violent Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang member’s previous arrest during his short time in the Big Apple, he flew to Georgia via the taxpayer dime, authorized by the Biden administration. He unsurprisingly found himself getting in even more legal troubles, although he was never deported, per The Post.
Ibarra was found “guilty” on 10 counts, including felony murder, for killing Laken Riley, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole, a Fox News report found.
To prevent this senseless murder from happening once again, all Senate Republicans voted in favor of the act, along with the majority of Democrats, defeating the 60-vote threshold that eliminates a filibuster, Fox News reported.
According to X account Libs of TikTok, Democrats who interestingly voted against it included Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Andy Kim, D-N.J., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Ed Markey, D-Mass, Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.
Currently, the bill has not been officially passed. Thursday’s vote was more-so a motion to proceed, leaving senators the opportunity to debate the bill, and add amendments before voting whether to adopt the measure, NBC News noted.
Earlier this week, the GOP-controlled House passed the Laken Riley Act in an outright bipartisan vote of 264 to 159, thus later being sent to the U.S. Senate for its cloture vote.
All 52 Republican senators, and Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., were co-sponsors of the bill, a report from Fox News explained.
“If you’re here illegally and you’re committing crimes, I don’t know why anybody thinks that it’s controversial, that they all need to go,” Fetterman told Fox News.
Throughout his campaign, President Trump decried Laken Riley’s murder as an unfortunate consequence of Joe Biden’s weak immigration policies.
After facing criticism over his administration’s border policies, Biden veered off-script to address the murder at his state of the union speech, though he distastefully botched her name as “Lincoln” Riley.
In the event that the act is quickly approved by the Senate, it potentially could land itself onto the president-elect’s desk shortly after his inauguration, JustTheNews reported.
