House Passes Laken Riley Act in First Vote

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted Tuesday to pass the Laken Riley Act, a bill that prioritizes the arrest of some criminal illegal aliens. Every Republican who voted and 48 Democrats voted in support of the bill, though three GOP members and eight Democrats did not vote.  

The bill is named after Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, who was murdered by an illegal alien in February 2024. The act, also known as HR 29, was the first piece of federal legislation taken up by the new 119th Congress. And for freshmen lawmakers like Rep. Addison McDowell, R-N.C., it was the first piece of legislation he voted on as a sitting member of Congress.  

“Laken Riley would be alive today if the Biden administration had prioritized the safety of our citizens over their open-borders agenda,” McDowell told The Daily Signal in an email Tuesday. “This bill is an important step in making sure something like this never happens again.”  

If passed in the Senate and signed into law, the Laken Riley Act would require Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest and detain illegal aliens who “commit theft offenses,” according to the bill’s author. The bill also gives states the authority to sue federal officials who refuse to enforce immigration laws. 

McDowell added that with President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, “there will be a new sheriff in town, and I am eager to help President Trump fix the Biden border crisis.”  

Speaking on the House floor Tuesday ahead of the vote, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., who wrote the bill, read a message from Riley’s family endorsing it.

“Laken would have been 23 on Jan. 10. There is no greater gift that could be given to her, or our country, than saving lives through this bill,” the Georgia congressman read. 

Riley is one of numerous American citizens who have been murdered by illegal aliens during the Biden administration. 

Collins first introduced the Laken Riley Act in the 118th Congress. The bill passed in the House with bipartisan support last March, but the then-Democrat-controlled Senate did not take up the legislation. The bill is now expected to pass through the new Republican-controlled Senate. 

Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Ted Budd, R-N.C., are leading the effort in the Senate to pass the act. According to Punchbowl News, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., is the lone Democrat joining Republicans to cosponsor the bill.  

While the bill did receive some support from Democrats in the House, many on the Left, such as Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chose to vote against the legislation.  

Nadler bashed the bill for requiring ICE to arrest and detain illegal aliens who are “merely charged with committing an act of theft or shoplifting,” adding that the bill is “pernicious and absurd.” 

Nadler did not address the fact that crossing the border illegally, as Laken Riley’s murderer did, is a crime in itself.  

In November, Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal alien from Venezuela, was found guilty of murdering Riley. Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard found Ibarra guilty of felony murder and malice murder, aggravated assault with intent to rape, kidnapping with bodily injury, obstructing a person making an emergency call, aggravated battery, tampering with evidence, and “peeping Tom.” Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison without parole. 

Ibarra first crossed into America as an illegal alien in 2022, according to officials. Ibarra was arrested in 2023 in New York on charges of child endangerment but was released before U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could ask local law enforcement to hold him. Ibarra later moved to Georgia.  

On the morning of Feb. 22, Riley left her home and went for a run along a wooded trail on the Athens campus of her alma mater, the University of Georgia, but never returned. The body of the nursing student was found hours later, and authorities determined she had died from blunt force trauma and suffocation. 

In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that more than 662,000 criminal illegal aliens were released into the interior of the U.S. Among those, 435,719 had already been convicted of a crime, with 226,847 more facing pending criminal charges.