Democrats in full retreat on immigration

John Fetterman, whose wife was famously undocumented, now pushing to deport people like her

If you were waiting for Democrats to capitulate on the issue they claimed during Trump’s last term was dearest to their heart, his hostility to immigrants, you didn’t have to wait long. A bill called The Laken Riley Act is zipping through Congress, already approved in the House and moving quickly in the Senate. Congressional reporter Pablo Manriquez filed the dispatch below for us.

(Pablo is not just a reporter, but also an oil painter. He painted the portrait I use as my Twitter avi back when I had more hair. I did not ask him to do this.)

You can expect to see more of Pablo in these pages as we track the transition of this second MAGA movement from campaign to reality.

Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) walks through the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, on November 13, 2024. Photo by ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP via Getty Images

Democrats in Full Retreat on Immigration

By Pablo Manriquez

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrats in Congress are in full retreat on immigration. On Tuesday night, the GOP-controlled House passed the Laken Riley Act by a vote of 264-159, doing so with the support of 48 Democrats, a surge in anti-migrant voting that caught immigrant rights lobbyists in Washington off guard. The Senate stands to follow suit.

The bill is named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered while jogging at the University of Georgia last February. The convicted perpetrator, José Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented migrant from Venezuela, had been charged with shoplifting at a Walmart in Ithaca, New York, six months before the incident.

The legislation, named in Riley’s memory, mandates the detention without bond of undocumented migrants arrested for minor offenses like shoplifting — in some cases, indefinitely. Critics have raised concerns about due process violations. “You can be arrested or even wrongly charged and be mandatorily detained without conviction,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a former head of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, adding: “This bill doesn’t actually change anything meaningful for safety.”

“This is the first immigration bill of the new Congress, and if passed, it will strengthen President-elect Trump’s hand in unleashing mass deportations on our communities,” Sarah Mehta, ACLU's senior border policy counsel, told USA Today. “It will force immigration authorities to detain individuals accused of nonviolent theft offenses like shoplifting regardless of whether or not law enforcement even deems them as a threat.”

The Democratic capitulation accelerated on Wednesday morning when freshman Sen. Ruben Gallego, from the border state of Arizona, announced on X that he would join Democrat John Fetterman as a co-sponsor. Fetterman, famously, has celebrated the fact that his wife came to the country as an undocumented immigrant.

Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly followed Gallego. By mid-afternoon, lead Republican sponsor Katie Britt told GOP colleagues at their private Senate luncheon she had secured enough Democratic backing to advance the legislation.

The Senate’s first vote is scheduled for 3:00 on Thursday.

On Monday, Fetterman, a close friend of Britt and her husband, Wesley, co-sponsored the Laken Riley Act. “If you’re here illegally and committing crimes, I don’t know why anyone thinks it’s controversial that they all need to go,” Fetterman told Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday night.

Fetterman’s support broke a promise he made to the immigrant rights community, namely that during his first two years in the Senate he would avoid supporting legislation that harms Dreamers, beneficiaries of what’s known as DACA. “That hasn’t changed,” Fetterman said in December, referring to his stance on protecting Dreamers. “I don’t know why we’re revisiting that at this point,” he added indignantly.

Gallego told Fox News the bill included protections for DACA recipients and minors. However, the bill’s text contains no such provisions, raising questions about whether Gallego had read the legislation.

The Laken Riley Act also includes a provision allowing state attorneys general to sue the federal government for damages exceeding $100 allegedly caused by undocumented individuals. According to Heidi Altman of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), this measure could create chaos within the executive and judicial branches.

“Federal agencies, under Democratic or Republican control, would face litigation at every turn from states governed by the opposing political party,” Altman wrote Monday on NILC’s website. “Administrations would likely stop even trying to issue new immigration policies when faced with endless litigation over every single memo and regulation,” she continued.

The bill had been reintroduced in the new Congress last week by Britt and another relatively obscure GOP backbencher, Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia. Britt’s previous moment in the sun came when she delivered a State of the Union response so bizarre and disturbing it was satirized by Scarlett Johansson on Saturday Night Live. Britt’s speech had included lurid tales of migrant crime that turned out to be wildly false.

"I fear that it’s only going to be when it comes to people’s doorsteps that they’ll realize fully what they’ve consented to,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-NY), who voted against the bill.

“I think there is something substantially empty about these bills, but they have a certain kind of symbolic force to them,” added Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). Republicans have spent years advancing seemingly nonsensical immigration messaging legislation like HR2 in the last Congress, an enforcement bill by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) that would ostensibly catalyze mandatory mass incarceration and removals of migrants but included no funding measure to pay for the proposal. The Laken Riley Act is similarly unfunded, forcing immigration officials to warehouse thousands of migrants, but without the appropriations necessary for facilities and personnel.“There’s an opportunity for bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform…this bill is just messaging,” freshman Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) told reporters after the House vote on Tuesday.

On Wednesday morning, Democratic opposition to the bill began to crumble as Politico ported that Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Jackie Rosen (D-NV), Angus King (I-ME), and Gary Peters (D-MI) were poised to vote for a motion to proceed on the bill.

Even Democrats opposed to the bill had moved off of the posture of resistance and into a negotiation mode. “I don’t like the bill, but I’m open to trying to make it better,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). “Obviously, we’ve got some important work to do—broader work on immigration that we can discuss as part of the amendable process.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) told Migrant Insider she has concerns about the Laken Riley Act but has not yet decided how to vote. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) expressed similar hesitation but hinted at his stance: “Both of the House members from my state voted no,” he said with a smile.

“We are going to do amendments,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), on her way to a meeting with Senate leadership. Peters, the former chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, echoed her remarks.

“I’m gonna keep my powder dry for now,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) when asked about his position. His Hawaiian counterpart, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), sighed audibly when questioned, saying only that she was “checking it out.”

On Wednesday evening, Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Ossoff announced their support, bringing Britt and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) within two Democratic votes of the 60 needed to avoid a filibuster.

Sen. Angus King (I-ME) told me Wednesday that he plans to vote for a motion to proceed with the bill but would not commit to supporting its final passage. Other Senate Democrats expressed hopes to amend the bill in ways that might send it back to the House.

On Thursday morning, Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) followed King by announcing he would vote to advance the bill in the hopes of facilitating a “serious bipartisan conversation about what we need to do to fix our broken immigration system.”

Warnock’s announcement was immediately decried by advocates who cautioned the senator against capitulating to the right-wing framing of the bill. “[T]he Laken Riley Act has zero to do with ‘our broken immigration system.’ Zip. Nada. Please read the bill, it’s 8 pages, you’ll see for yourself,” posted Aaron Riechlin Melnick of the American Immigration Council on X.

At present, no Democratic senator has signaled an intention to filibuster or obstruct the Laken Riley Act’s final passage. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), who advocates have leaned on in the past to oppose anti-migrant legislation in the senate, stayed in California this week to help coordinate the response to California’s wildfires. Senate Majority Leader Thune’s office did not respond to inquiries about the amendment process.

This is a developing story.