How Katie Britt Pushed Laken Riley Act to Final Passage in the Senate
The amended anti-immigrant bill, which mandates detention for minor offenses and empowers state AGs to challenge federal immigration policy, returns to the House.
WASHINGTON — Minutes before Senate Majority Leader John Thune put a controversial anti-immigrant bill by Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) on the floor for a final round of votes before final passage on Monday, we asked Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) if he was aye or nay.
Warner gave us a thumbs down, indicating he would vote against the Laken Riley Act, a bill that would mandate detention of migrants for misdemeanor offenses like shoplifting, and empower states attorneys general to sue the federal government and, in effect, sanction foreign governments over federal immigration policy. When Warner got to the Senate chamber, Britt, 42, was waiting to convince the 70 year-old Democrat to join Republicans to pass her bill.
Warner caved. So did Senator Raphael Warnock (R-GA) who Britt implored at the last minute to vote for her bill since Laken Riley, the woman for whom the bill was named, had been murdered in Warnock’s home state at the University of Georgia. In the end, the Laken Riley Act passed 64-35, with twelve Democrats voting in favor.
“I was really excited,” Britt exclaimed, in an exclusive interview with Migrant Insider after final passage. “It took talking and texting and answering any kind of questions about the bill, [addressing] any kind of misinformation that was out there,” she continued when asked how she convinced a dozen Democrats to support her bipartisan proposal.
Most Democrats were not won over by Britt’s charm, however, and voted against the Laken Riley Act at every step of the process in the Senate. Several filed amendments to the bill, like Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) who filed three: the first excluded DACA recipients and children under 16 years-old from mandatory detention under the Laken Riley Act, preserving due process protections for minors and Dreamers who commit crimes. Bennet's second and third amendments blocked state attorneys general from suing the federal government over immigration policy.
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Britt objected to unanimous consent on the amendment to protect Dreamers. “There no DACA recipients under the age of 17,” she said. “So I think there’s been a bit of a misnomer.” Britt continued: “You hear people like Senator Bennet talk about the DACA population and that of people who are peace loving individuals, so I think its kind of counterproductive to now say they’re gonna commit crimes. I think it goes a little bit against the actual argument that we heard from them recently.”
Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who co-sponsored Britt’s bill and had long-promised he would never vote to harm Dreamers, admitted the Laken Riley Act did not protect undocumented youth. Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, a formerly undocumented migrant from Brazil, are famously in a group chat with Britt and her husband, Wesley, a former professional football player. We asked him why he changed his mind about harming Dreamers. Fetterman did not provide a coherent response.
Similarly, Senator Ruben Gallego (AZ), the Democratic cosponsor of the Laken Riley Act whose support was widely seen as breaking the dam on his party’s resistance to the anti-immigrant proposal, a move that caught Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer completely off guard, has avoided answering press questions since falsely claiming to Chad Pergram of Fox News that the bill protected DACA recipients and minors.
The Laken Riley Act, now having cleared the Senate, is headed back to the House for a final vote following the addition of two Republican amendments. The first by Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) expanded the list of offenses that mandated ICE detention for migrants. The second by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) made the offenses subject to legal definitions to local jurisdictions, thus expanding the mandate further.
Debate in the House over the amended Laken Riley Act will begin Wednesday at 10 am ET. House Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to put the bill on the floor this week to get it to President Donald Trump’s desk as soon as possible. The glaring question that remains to be asked is whether Democratic cosponsors like Fetterman and Gallego, or the forty-five Democrats who voted for its initial passage in the House, will attend the bill signing ceremony at the White House.