The Senate on Friday cleared away the final major hurdle to enactment of legislation that would require the detention and deportation of undocumented migrants accused of minor crimes or assaulting a police officer, after several Democrats joined Republicans to advance it.
In a test vote of 61 to 35 that put the measure on a path to clear Congress within days, 10 Democrats teamed with Republicans to support moving to a final vote in the chamber, enough to surpass the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster. That all but guaranteed that the legislation, which passed the House with bipartisan support last week, would make it to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s desk to be signed after he is sworn in on Monday.
It still must win approval in the Senate and return to the House before heading to the White House.
The Senate action came after senators spent several days debating changes to the bill, a process that exposed deep divisions among Democrats over immigration as some in the party move to the right following their party’s electoral losses in November. The bill is the opening legislative move for Republicans in a broader push to crack down on immigration and significantly step up deportations, a promise that Mr. Trump made a centerpiece of his campaign.
It is named for Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was killed last year by a migrant who crossed into the United States illegally from Venezuela and who had previously been arrested for shoplifting, but had not been detained.
Republicans teed it up as the first of several border bills they hope to revive and enact when they cement their governing trifecta on Monday with Mr. Trump’s inauguration. A similar measure passed the House last year but died when the Democratic-led Senate declined to take it up. The G.O.P. also wants to resurrect measures to increase deportations, hold asylum seekers outside the United States and strip federal funding from cities that restrict their cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agencies.
The legislation instructs federal officials to detain unauthorized immigrants arrested for or charged with burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting, expanding the list of charges that would subject migrants to detention and potential deportation. Senators this week added assaulting a police officer to the expanded list.
Democrats raised grave concerns about the bill, arguing that it would undermine due process rights for migrants who had not yet been convicted of crimes. They also said it would waste limited resources that federal immigration enforcement agencies could use to apprehend people who have committed more serious, violent offenses.
“We have a long road ahead to address my deep concerns with the way this bill threatens due process and the potential for it to be abused,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said on Thursday. She called on her fellow Democrats to demand more changes to the measure, “but more than that, I urge them to demand a serious, bipartisan approach to tackling immigration in an effective, humane way.”
Still, several Democratic senators, including several who are facing re-election in 2026 or represent states that Mr. Trump carried, argued that the legislation was a common-sense move.
The bill would also give state attorneys general the right to sue the attorney general of the United States or the homeland security secretary if an immigrant who enters the country illegally goes on to commit a crime that harms the state or any of its residents.
Immigration advocates have denounced the provision as a covert attempt to let conservative governors and state attorneys general dictate federal migrant detention policies. Republicans on Wednesday killed an amendment proposed by Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, that would have stripped the section from the bill.
The post Senate Pushes Bill to Deport Migrants Charged With Crimes Past a Key Hurdle appeared first on New York Times.
