US lawmakers have begun the voting to expand pre-trial incarceration for foreign criminal suspects.
The Laken Riley Act, named for a 22-year-old student murdered by a Venezuelan man with no papers who was wanted for shoplifting, calls for the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes.
The newly elected Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson told reporters ahead of the vote that “As promised, we’re starting today with border security. If you polled the populace and voters, they would tell you that that was the top of the list.
“And we have a lot to do there to fix it — it’s an absolute disaster because of what has happened over the last four years — and the Laken Riley Act is a big part of that.”
The legislation, Congress’s first bill of the new session, already passed the House last year, with Republicans keen to highlight what they described as weak border security policies from President Joe Biden.
It was stalled in the Democratic-controlled Senate but is expected to get a vote as soon as Friday in the newly-inaugurated upper chamber, which flipped to the Republicans in November’s elections.
The bill will likely need at least eight opposition votes and could face a Democratic blockade, despite being co-sponsored by the party’s centrist Pennsylvania senator, John Fetterman.
Trump, who is returning for another four years as US President, would be sworn in on January 20.
Trump of the Republican Party defeated Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party to emerge US President-elect.
During his campaign, Trump had noted that the GOP platform proposes “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country”
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