GOP leaders are moving ahead with the Laken Riley Act. What’s in the bill?

The House of Representatives passed on Tuesday the Laken Riley Act, a bill named for a 22-year-old college student murdered by an undocumented immigrant last year.

The bill, which passed the House with bipartisan support in a 264-159 vote on Tuesday afternoon, would allow states to sue the Department of Homeland Security for “failures related to immigration enforcement.” While it already passed the House last Congress, it never went before the Senate.

Now, Republicans are pushing for a vote after promising to prioritize border security and immigration in the first days of the new 119th Congress. The Senate is expected to now take up the bill Friday, though it is unclear if it will pass.

Here’s what you need to know about the bill:

What is the Laken Riley Act?

The Laken Riley Act requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain “non-U.S. nationals” who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting.

It would also allow states to sue the federal government “for decisions or alleged failures related to immigration enforcement.” These “failures” could include decisions to “release non-U.S. national[s] from custody,” failure to “fulfill requirements relating to inspecting individuals seeking admission” to the U.S. and “failure to detain an individual who has been ordered removed” from the U.S., among other things.

The bill passed the House during the previous Congress, with 214 Republicans and 37 Democrats voting yes. However, the Senate has never voted on it.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said considering this act during the first week of the 119th Congress shows Republicans are keeping their promise to prioritize border security.

“If you polled the populace and the voters, they would tell you that [immigration] was the top of the list, and we have a lot to do there to fix it,” Johnson said at a Tuesday press conference. “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.”

Who was Laken Riley?

Riley was a 22-year-old University of Georgia student brutally beaten to death on February 22 by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.

Jose Ibarra, 26, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life without parole.

Prosecutors argued that he was out “hunting for females” when he came across Riley on February 22. When she “refused to be a rape victim, he bashed her skull in with a rock repeatedly,” they said.

Riley was a dedicated Christian who wanted to become a nurse after graduating, CNN reports.

“She was smart, hardworking, kind, thoughtful, and most importantly, she was a child of God,” her mother, Allyson Phillips, said in court late last year. “She had a personal relationship with Jesus, and she loved being His hands and feet in this world.”

Her roommate, Sofia Magana, praised Riley’s joyful spirit.

“Laken taught so many people in her life invaluable lessons, she showed me how to find joy in every moment, how to embrace life with an open heart, and how to dance in a crowded room without caring what anyone else,” Magana said in court.

Riley’s stepfather, John Phillips, described the 22-year-old’s life as rich and full of promise.

“I’m here today to let your honor and the entire world know that Laken’s life was not apparently full of promise, but instead, was abundantly and exceptionally full of promise,” Phillips said.

What are lawmakers saying about the bill?

Speaker Johnson implored Democrats to support the bill ahead of the vote and criticized President Joe Biden’s response to Riley’s murder.

“When we brought this bill forward last Congress, shockingly, amazingly to me, 170 House Democrats voted against that legislation,” he said on Tuesday. “But as Democrats struggle with their identity now as a party post-election, we’ll find out if they’re still clinging into that open border policy and that mantra, despite the American people roundly rejecting all that in November.”

“The only thing President Biden did after Laken’s tragic death was apologize for calling her murderer an illegal,” he added. “That’s outrageous, we all know the real victim here was young Laken. There are real consequences to policy decisions. This one was deadly.”

Biden publicly apologized after he faced Democratic backlash for calling Ibarra an “illegal” while speaking on Riley’s murder during his State of the Union address last year.

“I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal,’ it’s ‘undocumented,’” he told MSNBC in March.

Senator Katie Britt, the top Senate sponsor on the Laken Riley Act, slammed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for not bringing the bill up for a vote during the last Congress.

“Senate Republicans are prioritizing protecting American families from day one of the 119th Congress,” Britt told Politico. We’re ready to make America safe again, and we’re ready for President Trump’s second term.”

Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville told The Independent the bill is a “no-brainer.”

“We need to put everybody back in the game like ICE, and get people back in place where we can keep something like this from happening again,” he said Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler of New York previously criticized the legislation when it first came to the House last year. He accused Republicans of “exploiting her death for a partisan stunt” and “throwing together legislation to target immigrants in an election year,” CNN reports.

On the campaign trail, Trump often pointed to Riley’s case while slamming Biden’s border policies and blaming him for her murder. The president-elect’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, also teared up while discussing Riley’s murder during a live interview in November.

Jason Riley, however, has accused politicians of politicizing his daughter’s death.

“I’d rather her not be such a political, how you say — it started a storm in our country, and it’s incited a lot of people,” he told NBC News in March.

“I think it’s being used politically to get those votes,” he continued. “It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that. And she was much better than that, and she should be raised up for the person that she is. She was an angel.”

With reporting from Eric Garcia.