On Immigration, Democrats Have Something to Prove

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, January 08, 2025

 

When Senate Democrats blocked the Laken Riley Act last year, a bill named for the 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered by an illegal alien, they had their reasons.

 

The legislation was duplicative of other established laws already on the books, some said. Others maintained that the bill, which would compel U.S. immigration authorities to detain illegal residents who commit non-violent criminal offenses and allows state attorneys general to sue Homeland Security for taking actions deemed harmful to their states, violated the separation of powers.

 

Not every Democrat opposed the bill. The parties’ most exposed members on the frontlines of the 2024 election were open to it. Montana senator Jon Tester even co-sponsored the legislation, though that didn’t spare him his voters’ rebuke. But most of the Democratic caucus deemed the bill “a craven political maneuver that exploited a tragedy while doing nothing to address the situation at the border,” according to the New York Times. A few enterprising progressives even attempted to turn the legislation against the GOP by contending that this legislative cheap-shot would be moot even if passed because Republicans would not provide DHS with the “resources it needs to carry out its policies.”

 

The election results have imposed a change of heart on the Democratic Party.

 

“Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) privately opened the door on Tuesday to Senate Democrats negotiating amendments after the House passed the Laken Riley Act,” Axios reported Tuesday. The bill, which was approved by the House that same day with 264 votes, secured the support of 48 more Democratic House members than it got when the bill was first considered last March. Its prospects in the Senate, where it needs the backing of at least eight Democrats before it makes its way to the president’s desk, look increasingly bright.

 

Indeed, the fact that the bill failed to get the support of enough Democrats to become law last year is “the reason why we lost,” according to one of its original co-sponsors, Senator John Fetterman. “If you’re here illegally and you’re committing crimes, I don’t know why anybody thinks that it’s controversial, that they all need to go,” he told Fox News Channel yesterday. Well, his colleagues certainly did — at least, before that outlook was exposed as a blinkered delusion with purchase only on the progressive fringes of American politics.

 

Democrats know they have something to prove to voters on immigration. Passing this bill is unlikely to be sufficient to repair the trust deficit that has opened up between Democrats and voters when it comes to border security, but it’s a start.