WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed into law the Laken Riley Act, concerning non-US citizens charged or convicted of certain crimes, marking his first piece of legislation in his second presidential term.
After the Senate approved the measure in a bipartisan 64-35 vote, with a 263-156 vote the House of Representatives last week passed the bill, which is aimed at giving law enforcement more tools to detain illegal immigrants who commit or are believed to have committed certain crimes in the US.
The bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to detain certain non-US nationals (aliens under federal law) who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting.
It also authorizes states to sue the federal government for decisions or alleged failures related to immigration enforcement.
“In a few moments, the Laken Riley Act will become the very first bill that I proudly sign into law as the 47th President of the United States,” Trump said before signing the act.
Calling the measure “very important,” he said: “This is something that has brought Democrats and Republicans together. That’s not easy to do. Laken did it.”
The bill is named after Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered last year in the Southern state of Georgia by a migrant who was in the US illegally.
Riley’s murder drew national attention to the immigration debate after officials said her killer, Jose Antonio Ibarra, was a Venezuelan citizen who had illegally entered the country via Mexico in 2022.
Trump and the Republican Party used Riley’s death as part of their rallying cry on the campaign trail last year to demand stricter immigration policies at the southern border.
Critics of the focus on immigrant crime point to statistics saying immigrants and their families are far less likely to commit crimes than citizens born in the US.
