Amended Version of the ‘Laken Riley Act’ Passes Congress, Heads to Trump

On January 22, the House passed an amended version of S. 5, the “Laken Riley Act”, by a wide margin. The bill mandates the detention of certain criminal aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States and empowers state attorneys general to sue to force DHS to comply with various provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Named for a Georgia student slain by a Venezuelan migrant here illegally, the bill now heads to the White House for the president’s signature, an early victory for Donald Trump and immigration enforcement generally.

The Murder of Laken Riley, and Its Aftermath. Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student attending Augusta University in Athens, Ga., on the morning of February 22, when she went out for a run on the nearby University of Georgia campus.

Friends became concerned when she failed to return and called the police. Authorities located Riley shortly after noon that day in a wooded area. She was found to have suffered blunt force trauma and attempts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful.

The brutal murder of a student in broad daylight on a major college campus is shocking enough, but even more disturbing was the fact that her killer, Jose Ibarra, was a Venezuelan migrant who entered illegally in September 2022, was apprehended and released, and who in his short stay in the United States had already been arrested at least twice.

One of those arrests, in New York City in September 2023, was for endangering his five-year-old son. The second, in Athens in October 2023, was for shoplifting from a local Walmart. ICE, under restrictions imposed by then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, failed to detain Ibarra following either encounter.

Six days after Riley’s murder, I wrote about the incident and the then-suspect, expressing my concern that the heinous event would be swept under the rug by a media that had shown little concern for other migrant crimes. I could not have been more wrong.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R), from Riley’s home state of Georgia, challenged President Joe Biden on the floor of the House to “say her name!” during his March 7, 2024, State of the Union address. When Biden subsequently botched his attempt to identify Riley — and worse in the minds of many on the left, referred to Ibarra as an “illegal” — it only stirred up more furor.

The flub didn’t sit well with Riley’s mother, Allyson Phillips, who commented on Facebook: “Biden does not even KNOW my child’s name — it[‘s] pathetic! … If you are going to say her name (even when forced to do so) at least say the right name!”

Then-candidate Donald Trump met with Riley’s family and repeatedly raised her killing and other savage crimes committed by illegal migrants on the campaign trail while attacking the Biden administration’s migrant release policies.

The crime became too big for the media to ignore, and even the administration’s own supporters referenced it. During an October campaign stop for Democratic presidential candidate (and Biden’s vice president) Kamala Harris in Georgia, former President Bill Clinton stated, in reference to Riley:

You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn’t you? They made an ad about it, a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted that probably wouldn’t have happened.

H.R. 7511. In response to the killing, Georgia Rep. Mike Collins (R) introduced H.R. 7511, the first “Laken Riley Act” on March 1, 2024.

It would have required DHS to take aliens illegally present who were charged with, arrested for, convicted for, or who admitted to having committed acts that constitute the essential elements of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting into custody, and given state attorneys general power to sue for injunctive relief to force DHS to comply with immigration-enforcement mandates in the INA.

The first section, of course, was a direct response to the specific chain of events that allowed Ibarra to remain free in the United States to kill Riley.

The second provision would have reversed the Supreme Court’s June 2023 opinion in U.S. v. Texas, where the justices ruled that states lacked standing to challenge the Biden administration’s refusal to detain aliens removable on criminal grounds, as mandated by sections 236(c) and 241(a)(2) of the INA.

H.R. 7511 passed the House six days after it was introduced, 251 to 170, supported by all 214 voting Republicans and 37 Democrats. When it was sent to the Senate, however, then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) refused to even bring it up for a vote. With the end of the 118^th Congress, the first iteration of the bill died.

H.R. 29. Undeterred, Collins reintroduced the Laken Riley Act in the new, 119^th Congress, where it was introduced as H.R. 29.

It was the first bill voted on in the House this session, and on January 7, H.R. 29 passed the chamber by an even wider margin than it had 10 months previously, with a vote of 264 yeas to 159 nays, as 48 Democrats joined all voting Republicans in supporting the measure.

S. 5. The Laken Riley Act was again sent to the Senate, but this time around that chamber was controlled by Republicans following the November 2024 election, with South Dakota Sen. John Thune replacing Schumer as majority leader.

When H.R. 29 arrived, the Senate was already considering its own version of the bill, introduced by Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) as S. 5.

The bill passed a key test vote in the Upper Chamber on January 9, with a bipartisan majority of 84 senators voting to open S. 5 for debate.

On January 15, a slew of amendments to the bill were offered, and three were considered on the Senate floor.

One of those amendments, by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), would have struck the provisions in the bill that empowered state attorneys general to sue to force compliance with the enforcement mandates in the INA. That amendment failed on a party-line vote of 46 to 49.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) offered a separate amendment, which would have added crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury to the list of offenses that would trigger mandatory detention of an alien here illegally.

The Ernst amendment passed with a broad bipartisan majority, 75 to 24.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) then offered an amendment amending the Ernst amendment by adding “assault of a law enforcement officer” to the list of crimes that would trigger mandatory DHS detention of an illegal alien.

The vote on that one was a little closer, with 70 senators voting in favor of the amendment and 25 (all Democrats) opposed.

With those amendments, the bill was brought up for a final vote in the Senate, passing the chamber by a margin of 64 yeas and 35 nays. Among the Democrats voting for final passage were Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Mark Warner (Va.), freshman Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), and both Georgia senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.

S. 5 then went to the House, and on January 22, it passed the chamber 263 to 156, with 46 Democrats joining all voting GOP representatives in favor of the bill. This time around, 13 Democrats took a pass by not voting at all.

Recap of the Bill, with Amendments. The Laken Riley Act is now off to the White House, where President Trump is expected to sign the bill in short order.

To recap briefly, as the Laken Riley Act now amends section 236(c) of the INA to require DHS to detain any alien who has not been admitted to the United States, and who:

is charged with, is arrested for, is convicted of, admits having committed, or admits committing acts which constitute the essential elements of any burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, or assault of a law enforcement officer offense, or any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury to another person.

As I have noted in the past, generally when immigration officers and adjudicators consider whether a crime triggers penalties under the INA, they must apply the so-called “categorical approach”, a tortuous analysis that examines the minimum conduct that an alien would have been found to have committed to have been convicted.

Explaining the full implications of the categorical approach is complicated but suffice it to say that it usually benefits criminal aliens seeking to avoid detention and removal.

S. 5 ditches the categorical approach for purposes of section 236(c) as amended, directing adjudicators and DHS to consider “the terms ‘burglary’, ‘theft’, ‘larceny’, ‘shoplifting’, ‘assault of a law enforcement officer’, and ‘serious bodily injury’” according to the meanings those terms are given under the laws in the “jurisdiction in which the acts occurred”.

That will make it harder for those criminal aliens to challenge their detentions and to seek release.

The bill also allows states to sue for injunctive relief to force DHS to detain: inadmissible aliens at the borders and ports who are subject to mandatory detention under section 235(b) of the INA; aliens inadmissible on criminal grounds and deportable aliens removable on specified criminal grounds in section 236(c) of the INA; and aliens ordered removed pending deportation under section 241(a)(2) of the INA (criminal aliens in particular).

In addition, it allows states to sue the federal government for injunctive relief to force the secretary of State to “discontinue granting immigrant visas or nonimmigrant visas, or both, to citizens, subjects, nationals, and residents of” so-called “recalcitrant countries” — governments that refuse to take back their nationals who are ordered deported — as provided for in section 243(d) of the INA.

Finally, it allows states to sue the federal government to prevent DHS from releasing inadmissible aliens on parole on a categorical basis, or on any grounds aside from “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “a significant public benefit”, restrictions that Congress has already included in the parole provision in section 212(d)(5)(A) of the INA.

That’s a clear rebuke to Biden administration parole programs like “CHNV parole” and what I have dubbed the “CBP One app interview scheme”, two processes quickly shut down by President Trump on his first day in office. All told, Biden released more than 2.2 million aliens without visas on parole, a clear abuse of that limited authority.

Ideally, Congress acts proactively, passing bills that will safeguard the American people from potential dangers and threats. Usually, however, our representatives react to such risks only after Americans have been harmed.

The Laken Riley Act is a prime example of reactive legislation, but in Congress’s defense, few could have seen the lack of regard the Biden administration had for the legislative branch’s immigration restrictions. Future administrations will know better — or should, at least.