Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.) admitted she regrets siding with her Republican colleagues when voting in favor of a migrant detention bill earlier this year, saying she trusted the Trump administration at the time to work with Democrats.
“As I’ve thought about it over the past couple of months, I probably would have voted differently. It’s a vote that I regret,” Hayes said at a CNN town hall on Thursday.
Hayes and 45 other House Democrats voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act, a bill named after a Georgia nursing student murdered by a Venezuelan migrant. It required that migrants without legal status who are accused of crimes ranging from theft to violence be detained, even if the allegation has not been proved.
The bill also passed the Senate, and Trump signed it into law in January.
Many critics of the law, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) raised concerns over due process rights for migrants at the time, an issue that has been highlighted more in recent months following the Trump administration’s aggressive push against immigrants.
“In this bill, if a person is so much as accused of a crime, if someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they would be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Hayes told host Kaitlan Collins that she voted for the legislation because of a “small piece of it” covering crimes that “caused injury or death to a police officer.” She said she believed at the time that the Trump administration would work with House Democrats.
We Don't Work For Billionaires. We Work For You.
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
“I trusted that this administration ... if they wanted to have border security, they wanted to work with Democrats, that we could actually move forward,” Hayes said. “I’m not really sure of that because I’ve seen the rhetoric that has come out and the attacks that have been targeted towards immigrants. So I am very cautious and careful when I’m negotiating my votes moving forward.”
Rep. Derek Tran (D-Calif.) also spoke at the town hall and seemed less regretful of his vote, stating that he draws “a line when it comes to crime.”
He added, “I believe that when you commit a crime, you should be deported.”