Washington, Jan 23 (IANS) The Republican-controlled US Congress handed President Donald Trump an early win in his crackdown on illegal immigration on Wednesday, passing a bill to expand pretrial detention for foreign criminal suspects, media reported.
This will mark President Trump’s first piece of legislation that will be signed into law during his second term.
The Laken Riley Act mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes.
The bill passed the Senate with a 64-35 vote earlier this week, following which the House of Representatives approved it with a 263-256 vote.
Receiving bipartisan support, apart from Republicans, 46 Democrats voted for it in the House and 12 voted to support it in the Senate.
The new law is in line with President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration as he signed executive orders on his first day in office announcing mass deportations, sending US troops to the country’s southern border to prevent illegal crossings.
The Laken Riley Act was named after 22-year-old student Laken Riley who was murdered by an undocumented Venezuelan man wanted for shoplifting.
Twenty-six-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra was convicted of Riley’s murder after she was found dead in a wooded area at the University of Georgia in Athens.
The new law would require US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain illegal immigrants who are either arrested or charged with certain crimes including burglary, theft, larceny, and shoplifting, or who have been accused of assault on a law enforcement officer.
The bill was passed in both houses after a modification was made to the original document to expand mandatory detention to include crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury as well.
President Trump had pointed to the Laken Riley case during his election campaign in November as proof of immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country.
One of the issues Democrats highlighted during the proceedings was that the implementation of the new law would cost $83 billion in the first three years, which is more than the Homeland Security Department’s annual budget.
Several members of Congress also said that the new law would violate due process.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that detaining people who had been accused, but not convicted of a crime would be a “fundamental suspension of a core American value”.
–IANS
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