House to vote on Laken Riley Act as first bill of new Congress

The House will vote at 1 p.m. Tuesday on the Laken Riley Act as its first piece of legislation of the 119th Congress.

Reintroduced by Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican, the legislation pins Laken Riley’s death on the Biden administration’s open-border policies and grants power to attorneys general to sue the federal government if they can show their states are being harmed over failure to implement national immigration policies. The measure also allows states to sue the Department of Homeland Security for harm caused to citizens allegedly due to illegal immigration.

“If you polled the populace and the voters, they would tell you that that was the top of the list, and we have a lot to do there to fix it. It’s an absolute disaster because of what has happened over the last four years, and the Laken Riley Act is a big part of that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday.

The bill was named after Riley, a nursing student who was murdered by illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra while jogging on campus at the University of Georgia. Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison for the murder.

“The only thing President Biden did after Laken’s tragic death was apologize for calling her murderer an illegal,” Johnson added. “That’s outrageous. We all know the real victim here was young Laken. There are real consequences to policy decisions. This one was deadly.”

The House previously passed the bill in March by a vote of 251-170, with 37 Democrats voting in favor. The bill is expected to pass again with bipartisan support.

“When we brought this bill forward last Congress, shockingly, amazingly to me, 170 House Democrats voted against that legislation,” Johnson said. “But as Democrats struggle with their identity now as a party post-election, we’ll find out if they’re still clinging into that open border policy and that mantra despite the American people roundly rejecting all that in November. We’ll see. This will be a telling vote.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune teed up a procedural vote on the Laken Riley Act in the Senate, which could occur as soon as this week. It will be one of the first legislative actions taken by the new Senate.

The bill will need 60 votes to advance through the upper chamber. Even with the Republicans’ new 53-vote majority, it could prove difficult to court the necessary Democratic support to advance it.

So far, only one Democrat, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, is reportedly co-sponsoring the bill, which is being led in the chamber by Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Ted Budd, R-N.C. It is unclear whether there will be requisite Democratic support to clear the Senate.

The Senate, under Democratic leadership last session, never considered the act as a standalone bill. But it previously considered the Laken Riley Act when Senate Republicans forced a vote on it as an amendment to a sweeping government funding package in March. The amendment was considered as a government shutdown loomed, and changes to the bill would have likely forced a government shutdown.

No Democrats voted for it at the time, though it later earned the support of Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who lost reelection to Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy.