NEW: Senate Expected To Pass Laken Riley Act In Huge Early Win For Trump

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to take office with a significant legislative accomplishment on the horizon, and one that dovetails with his message of increasing federal efforts to deport criminal illegal immigrants.

The U.S. House on Tuesday passed the Laken Riley Act, which would lower the criminal threshold for individuals living in the U.S. illegally and charged with certain nonviolent crimes like theft, burglary, and the sale of narcotics. The bipartisan vote saw 48 Democrats break with 159 of their colleagues and vote with Republicans to advance the measure to the Senate, where it is expected to be taken up by Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) while Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has privately told his caucus they may begin to engage with Republicans in a bid to pass the bill as long as concessions are made. Schumer’s pronouncement appears to have opened the floodgates within his party as nine Democratic senators signaled on Wednesday that they are supportive of the Laken Riley Act, and their ideological and geographical diversity shows how much damage the shifting sands of immigration have inflicted on their party.

Following Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) announcement on Fox News that he would support the bill, eight other colleagues rushed to join him: Mark Kelly (D-AZ); Jacky Rosen (D-NV); Tammy Duckworth (D-IL); Gary Peters (D-MI); Ruben Gallego (D-AZ); Jon Ossoff (D-GA); John Hickenlooper (D-CO); and Angus King (I-ME), the latter of whom is an independent but caucuses with the Democrats. Republicans need just seven votes from Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster, an accomplishment they will have quickly notched if the coalition of Laken Riley newcomers continues to hold. Notable is the geographic swatch of representation: border-state senators like Kelly, Rosen, and Gallego may seem obvious, but more surprising is the support from Duckworth and Hickenlooper, Democrats in reliably blue states that for several years have been pounded by swells of criminal migrants causing mayhem after being bussed north.

To be sure, there’s a long way to go from saying they’re “open” to supporting the Laken Riley Act and actually voting to send it to President-elect Trump’s desk. Sen. Duckworth told Politico in a brief interview on Wednesday, “I have real concerns about it, not the least of which is it’s an unfunded mandate.” Ossoff said he’d vote to advance the bill to begin debate. Other concessions that may be sought are around what threshold of criminal behavior by illegal immigrants may be tolerated before federal authorities submit detainers and seek to take them into custody. Under current law, two petty nonviolent offenses would be enough to see illegal immigrants apprehended and deported. The Laken Riley Act would expand offenses to include a single nonviolent offense such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting, though in practice, holding illegal immigrants until the arrival of federal authorities has been a challenge in deep blue cities and states. Sanctuary policies in municipalities like Chicago, New York, and Boston prohibit local police from detaining suspects solely on immigration status, allowing them to post bail and disappear before federal authorities can arrive. Many also do not honor requests for detainers, which officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement typically submit after being alerted to the arrest of a suspected illegal immigrant.

Other Democrats have been noncommittal about supporting the bill, even as Americans in deep-blue parts of the country like New York rip their Democratic congressmen for opposing its passage in the House. It’s now up to Democrats like Fetterman to convince his colleagues that it’s better to get on the right side of immigration or risk remaining in the political wilderness. “I’d like to remind everybody that we have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of migrants here illegally that have been convicted of crimes, and I don’t know why – who wants to defend them to remain in our nation?” he asked on Fox News. “And now if you’re here committing crimes and those things, I don’t know why anybody thinks it’s controversial that they all need to go.” Asked if illegal immigration was a defining issue of the 2024 election, Fetterman concurred. “I think if we can’t – you know, there’s 47 [Democrats] in the Senate, and if we can’t pull up with seven votes, and get at least seven out of 47, then that’s one of the reasons why we lost. That’s one of ’em, in part,” he added.