The first bill considered in the 119th Congress now heads to the Senate

By Andrew R. Arthur on January 8, 2025

On Tuesday, House Republicans — and 48 Democrats — voted to pass H.R. 29, the “Laken Riley Act”, a bill named after a Georgia college student killed last February by an illegal entrant who had been released into the United States. Given it was the first bill considered in the new 119th Congress, it’s a clear indication representatives are moving quickly to respond to voters’ concerns about the ongoing migrant surge and the looming threat of illegal alien crime. It appears the bill will get the 60 votes it needs to clear the Senate.

The Killing of Laken Riley. Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta College, went for a run on the campus of the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Ga., on the morning of February 22, 2024. Shortly thereafter, according to authorities, she called 911 from her cellphone, but the dispatcher was unable to make contact before the call ended.

She was reported missing shortly after noon that day, and less than a half hour later her body was discovered by a UGA police officer in a wooded area 65 feet from a jogging trail.

An autopsy revealed blunt force trauma to her head — “including eight injuries to the left side of her skull and an injury just above her right temple” — as well as evidence that she had suffered asphyxiation. The coroner determined that a combination of those injuries led to Riley’s death.

Jose and Diego Ibarra. Surveillance video led investigators to both to 26-year-old Jose Ibarra and to his 28-year-old brother Diego, who lived together about a mile from the scene of the murder.

Both are Venezuelan nationals who had entered illegally — Jose Ibarra on September 8, 2022, near El Paso, Texas, and Diego Ibarra on April 30, 2023, also near El Paso — and both were subsequently released.

After he was released, Jose Ibarra went to New York, where he was cited for endangering his five-year-old son, who was riding on the back of his moped without a helmet. He thereafter left the city and moved to join his brother Diego in Athens.

In October 2023, both Ibarra brothers were arrested by local police in Athens for shoplifting from a local Walmart. Six weeks later, Diego Ibarra was again arrested for shoplifting at the same Walmart.

Diego Ibarra was questioned the day after the Riley killing as a suspect in the murder. He offered a police officer a fake green card as identification and was subsequently arrested and charged with two counts of possessing a fraudulent document. He pled guilty to those federal charges in July.

Jose Ibarra was also arrested and questioned in connection with the killing on February 23, 2024. Police noted scratches on his arms, and DNA matching his was subsequently found under Riley’s fingernails. Other forensic evidence also linked Jose Ibarra to the crime.

Following a bench trial, a Georgia state court judge found Jose Ibarra guilty on 10 counts — including murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, and aggravated assault with intent to rape — in late November. The judge sentenced Jose Ibarra to life in prison without parole.

The Laken Riley Act. In response to concerns raised by this brutal killing and Ibarra’s entry and release into the United States, Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) introduced what was then H.R. 7511, the “Laken Riley Act”, on March 1, 2024.

That bill would have required DHS to detain aliens who have been convicted of, arrested for, charged with, or who have admitted to committing “any burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting offense” as those terms are defined in the jurisdiction where those acts are committed.

That latter point — defining those crimes under state and local law — is a break from current practice, under which DHS and the courts define crimes for immigration purposes using the so-called “categorical approach”.

That categorical approach, which requires cops and jurists to compare criminal convictions to “generic” federal definitions to determine the minimum acts criminals were found to have committed (regardless of what they actually did), was originally concocted for federal sentencing purposes before it was applied in immigration cases.

The categorical approach is about as incomprehensible from a legal standpoint as the “hearsay” rule, but trust me when I say that the former standard is much more favorable to alien criminals than using standard state and local definitions of crimes.

In addition, H.R. 7511 would have allowed states to sue the federal government for injunctive relief related to failures by DHS to detain aliens subject to detention under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) if the “failure caused the state or its residents harm, including financial harm of more than $100”.

That would allow pro-enforcement states like Texas to curb DHS abuses of its parole and release powers under future administrations by giving the states standing to challenge migrant releases in federal court. The Supreme Court held in June 2023 that those states’ lack of standing left them defenseless to oppose the most egregious Biden administration alien-criminal releases.

As important — from a legislative branch perspective — those states could, under the bill, act as proxies for Congress against executive branch abuses in bringing suits to force DHS to comply with restrictions Congress has placed on alien releases in the INA.

That bill passed the GOP-controlled House on March 7, 2024, by a vote of 251 to 170, with 37 Democrats joining all 214 Republicans who were present in supporting H.R. 7511. It was then sent to the Senate, where then-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) refused to bring it to the floor for a vote.

The Vote. Pending bills die at the end of congresses, so Collins reintroduced the Laken Riley Act on January 3, 2025, the first day of the new 119th Congress, where it received bill number H.R. 29.

As noted above, it was the first bill considered by the House this term, and it passed on Tuesday (January 7) by a vote of 264 to 159, with 48 Democrats joining all voting Republicans in supporting the bill.

As Capitol Hill tipsheet The Hill noted after the vote:

Reps. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), Val Hoyle (D-Ore.), Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) voted “yes” on Tuesday after voting “no” in March. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) previously did not vote on the matter but voted “yes” on Tuesday.

Interestingly, none of those Democrats won reelection in particularly tight races in November. Moskowitz had the closest reelection bid, defeating Republican Joe Kaufman by just less than five points, whereas Sewell won by nearly 27 points, Torres by more than 55 points, Morelle by 21-plus points, Hoyle by just less than eight points, McBath by 49.4 points, and Boyle by 43 points.

That’s notable given that the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), condemned the “anti-immigrant agenda” he contended is being pushed by House GOP leadership after the vote.

There are a few reasons why those Democrats may have taken the votes that they did. Perhaps they understand their constituents are concerned about migrant crime and the fiscal costs of the border surge over the past four years, or they decided to take an easy vote on a bill that faces an uncertain path in the Senate.

Alternatively, their votes may represent an effort to rebrand their party and distance it from immigration policies that have proven to be unpopular with wide swathes of the electorate. A commonsense conclusion that migrant criminals should be off the streets and detained shouldn’t be ruled out either.

The Senate. The bill once again heads to the Senate for consideration. New Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is a cosponsor of the Laken Riley Act in the upper chamber, as is Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman. Thune is preparing a procedural vote on the legislation, which will require 60 votes to pass the Senate and head to the president’s desk.

With Fetterman and all 53 GOP senators on board, the bill requires six more Democratic votes to pass. Recently elected Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) just joined Fetterman and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) in favor of the act, while Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) from Riley’s home state of Georgia is also expected to vote to advance the legislation. Politico reports that five other Democratic senators have said they will also vote to advance the bill, including Kelly (Ariz.), Rosen (Nev.), Duckworth (Ill.), Hickenlooper (Colo.), and King (a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats).

If that holds it would mean the bill would survive a filibuster.

Laken Riley’s murder is just one of many tragedies that could have been avoided had the Biden administration simply complied with the immigration laws Congress has passed. If the bill named for her passes, a future administration will be less likely to make the same mistakes.