Senate passes border crackdown bill, teeing up final House vote

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Monday approved a bill that would mandate detentions and potential deportations for migrants charged with certain crimes, setting it on a glide path to clear Congress this week and be signed by President Donald Trump.
In a vote of 64-35 just hours after Trump was sworn in, 12 Democrats joined Republicans to approve the bill, reflecting a growing bipartisan consensus around clamping down on those who have entered the country without legal permission.
That sent the measure back to the House, which passed it with bipartisan support this month and is expected to give it final approval this week. It all but guaranteed that the legislation would be quickly signed by Trump, who on Monday began his promised immigration crackdown as he started his second term.
The bill, called the Laken Riley Act, is named for 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 in a shoplifting case, but had not been detained.
Passage in the Senate came after Republicans and Democrats spent last week 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 legislation instructs federal officials to detain immigrants in the U.S. illegally who have been 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 added assaulting a police officer and crimes that result in death or serious bodily injury to the expanded list.
Republicans teed up the measure as the first of several border bills they hope to revive and enact now that they have cemented their governing trifecta with Trump’s inauguration. A similar measure passed the House last year but died when the Democratic-led Senate declined to take it up.
The GOP 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.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.