Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said deciding to support the Laken Riley Act came down to basic common sense.
The Republican House, which has the slimmest of majorities, passed the legislation as its first bill of the new Congress. The Laken Riley Act is an immigration policy measure named for the 22-year-old Georgia nursing school student who was brutally murdered last year by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old illegal immigrant who was arrested in 2022 for entering the United States illegally. Ibarra was “paroled and released for further processing,” according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) authored the bill, which changed federal law to require ICE to issue detainers and take custody of people in the country illegally who commit crimes.
“I think multiple things can be true at the same time. We absolutely need to have a secure border, and I have always also been incredibly supportive and protective for Dreamers,” Fetterman told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
“Even President Trump expressed that he’s even open to that,” he said of Donald Trump’s recent radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, in which the president-elect said he was “OK talking about the Dreamers.”
“But I can’t imagine why anyone would find it controversial that we have hundreds of thousands of people here illegally with criminal records, and they all need to be deported. And I’m not sure why that would be controversial or why somebody would want to defend that,” Fetterman said.
Ibarra was also arrested by New York City police in September 2023 and charged with “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation” and released “before a detainer could be issued,” ICE said in a news release at the time.
Fetterman joined 52 Senate Republicans co-sponsoring the bill Tuesday, including fellow Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, the newly elected member from Arizona, thus improving the odds of the bill passing in the upper chamber.
Gallego said in a statement, “We must give law enforcement the means to take action when illegal immigrants break the law, to prevent situations like what occurred to Laken Riley.”
Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) also indicated they would vote to advance the bill, according to a Politico report.
Republicans will need three more Democrats (in addition to those four) to support the bill for it to pass over any possible filibuster effort.
The House vote was 264 to 159, with 48 Democrats, including Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) and Philadelphia Democrat Brendan Boyle, joining all Republicans in support. Deluzio said people all over the political spectrum want public safety.
“They want our immigration system to be better. They want our border to be more secure,” he said.
Deluzio, like Fetterman, is known to keep two feet on the ground, connected to his constituents in Pennsylvania. He said he talks a lot about deeply believing that if you work hard and play by the rules, the American dream should be yours.
“I don’t care if you’re born in Monaca or in Mexico, if you play by the rules, you got a shot at this,” he said. “And I think most people who I represent think it makes a lot of sense that if you aren’t playing by the rules, you commit violent crimes, and you’re here illegally, you shouldn’t get to stay in this country. And that’s what this was about.”
The legislation will now head to the upper chamber and be brought to the floor for an initial vote on Friday, the same day Riley would have celebrated her 23rd birthday.
Fetterman said when you realize that you have 270,000 to 300,000 migrant encounters at the border, that is a problem.
“That is the size of Pittsburgh, showing up at the border,” he said. “And I’m like, where do these folks go? What happens? How do you support that? How is that sustainable? And there was never a real answer as to why other than that things are out of control and we need a secure border.”
“I don’t know why anybody thinks it makes sense to allow people here illegally with criminal records or that are actively engaging in kinds of criminal behavior. They all need to go and to make sure that things like what happened with Laken and that’s why I was happy to co-sponsor,” he said.
Fetterman said that as a father who sends his daughter off to college and expects her to have a successful, enriching experience, the last thing you expect to happen to them is what happened to Riley.
“You don’t even need to be a parent to understand what happened to their family, but if you are a dad and you have a daughter, as I do, I … my goodness, that’s my point,” he said. “This was someone that was arrested in multiple kinds of jurisdictions, and why would you just allow this person free to just putter around to continue to break the law and now ending it in an incredibly tragic way? … Of all of the people that are here illegally, the ones that I think are deserving protecting are the Dreamers, but the ones that don’t deserve to be, like people with criminal records and that are actively behaving in a criminal way, they all need to go.”
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In November, Ibarra was found guilty of kidnapping, assaulting, and murdering Riley during her jog around the University of Georgia campus in Athens. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Some Democrats took a strident approach to the bill. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) posted on X, “I voted against this fear mongering bill because it divides our communities, fails to keep us safe, doesn’t protect due process guaranteed by the constitution or fix our broken immigration system.”