Democrats Begin Showing Support for Laken Riley Act

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to office, Democrats in Congress are showing some signs of shifting to the right on the key issue of immigration, following the Republican Party’s lead on the matter.

According to Politico, a major sign of this shift is in the number of Democrats who supported a bill called the Laken Riley Act, which was passed on Tuesday with unanimous Republican support and 48 Democratic votes; when the same legislation was proposed last March, only 37 Democrats supported it.

The bill is named after the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was murdered by a Venezuelan illegal alien while she was going for a morning jog on campus. Her case became a rallying cry for conservatives and opponents of mass migration, with Riley’s family speaking out on how the open-border policies of the outgoing Biden Administration played a direct role in their daughter’s brutal murder. The bill named after Laken would crack down even harder on illegals who commit violent crimes, and would force the detention of any illegal alien who has been charged with theft or burglary.

The Senate is set to vote on the bill on Friday. Although it needs a simple majority to pass, it needs 60 votes to overcome a potential filibuster. Three Democrats in the upper chamber have signaled their support for the bill: Senators John Fetterman (D-Penn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.). Both Peters and Ossoff are up for re-election in the coming 2026 cycle, while Fetterman has increasingly established himself as a more moderate Democrat since he was first elected in 2022.

In addition to these three, at least two of the newly-elected Senate Democrats, Senators Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), previously voted for the Laken Riley Act when they were members of the House.

“We need to take a different approach with immigration,” said Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.), one of the House Democrats who voted for the bill. “What shouldn’t be lost is that we have to fix this system and do more than just one piece of this.”

Even Democrats who voted against the bill nevertheless acknowledged its powerful underlying message of protecting American citizens from violence committed by illegals.

“I think violence in this country is unacceptable no matter who commits any act of violence, and we also have to have a strong foundation for the rule of law,” said Congressman Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), who voted against the bill.

Immigration has long been the dominant issue of President Trump’s agenda, including building a wall along the southern border, deporting as many illegals as possible, and cracking down on legal immigration. Despite the bipartisan support for the Laken Riley Act, it is still expected that Democrats will resist much of President Trump’s actions on immigration. As such, the president-elect plans to once again use the budget reconciliation process and executive actions to carry out his plans for deportations and finishing the border wall, which will allow him to bypass Congress.