Cantwell and Murray say they’ll push for amendments as Senate gears up to debate deportation policy in Laken Riley Act

WASHINGTON – Immigration policy will take center stage when Congress returns to the Capitol this week after most Senate Democrats voted Thursday to begin debate on a bill that would require the deportation of immigrants who are charged with minor crimes while in the country illegally.
The procedural vote in the Senate, which allowed debate on the bill but didn’t pass it, came two days after 48 House Democrats voted with all of the lower chamber’s Republicans to pass the Laken Riley Act, named after a 22-year-old Georgia woman who was murdered by a man from Venezuela after he was arrested for shoplifting but wasn’t detained, despite not having permission to be in the United States.
Most of the 47 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, including Sen. Maria Cantwell, voted to move forward with the legislation. Her fellow Washington Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray, was one of five members of the party who didn’t vote – “Due to a pressing personal obligation,” according to her office – while only eight Senate Democrats and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont opposed the motion.
“The immigration issue deserves to be discussed,” Cantwell said in a statement. “I hope that Republicans will allow debate and amendments that would bring this proposal more consistent with current Washington State law. Additionally, I hope they will consider amendments to boost resources for border security, including disrupting the flow of fentanyl.”
A spokesman for Murray said the senator will work to improve the Laken Riley Act through the amendment process this week, but she opposes the bill in its current form “because she believes our prosecutorial resources and detention efforts should be focused on violent criminals first and foremost.”
“The bill, as written, would take away resources from detaining true threats to public safety, while ending due process for some people,” Murray spokesman Amir Avin said in a statement. “A Trump administration could abuse this law to deport Dreamers, farmworkers, and other essential workers who may never be convicted of a crime, and state attorneys general could abuse it to wreck major humanitarian relief pathways like Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan and Ukrainian nationals.”
Immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children, colloquially known as Dreamers, are protected by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program enacted by the Obama administration but never codified by Congress. Trump has said he supports preserving that program, known as DACA, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained a 23-year-old DACA recipient in the Seattle area during his first administration.
On Friday, President Joe Biden extended Temporary Protected Status – a program that allows immigrants to stay in the United States when their home countries are deemed unsafe – for nearly 1 million immigrants from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela. Trump’s incoming chief border official, Tom Homan, suggested in November that the new administration may end that program, known as TPS.
Avin added implementing the House-passed bill would cost more than double the current budget of the Department of Homeland Security, calling it “not a serious proposal that can be enacted into law.”
Bills often pass the House, where the majority party can pass legislation on its own, before being tempered in the Senate through the amendment process. But the Laken Riley Act’s swift progress in the Senate, where the filibuster rule lets a united minority party block legislation advanced by the majority, signals that some Democrats are taking a more hawkish turn on one of the defining issues of the presidential election.
Some Democrats in Congress see President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in November, on a platform defined largely by exaggerated claims about the danger posed by immigrants, as proof that their party has been too slow to respond to Americans’ concerns about the unprecedented surge in immigration that occurred from 2021 to 2023.
The Laken Riley Act is a relatively narrow bill, but GOP lawmakers plan to introduce several other pieces of immigration-related legislation that passed in the previous Congress with some degree of Democratic support, including bills to suspend federal funding for so-called “sanctuary cities” that decline to enforce federal immigration laws and to increase penalties for undocumented immigrants who flee or assault police or commit acts of domestic violence or sexual assault.
Republicans also intend to advance a broader border and immigration policy bill, which passed the GOP-controlled House in 2023 but had no chance to advance in the Democratic-majority Senate or avoid a veto by Biden.
The Senate will begin debate on the Laken Riley Act this week, before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.