The White House is reserving judgment regarding whether President Joe Biden would sign the Republican-proposed Laken Riley Act into law.
“The process is still playing out,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Friday. “We want to evaluate the bill. We haven’t done that yet.”
The Laken Riley Act passed the Senate’s 60-vote threshold on Thursday with bipartisan support, so the chamber can start debating the Republican priority measure. Democrats have indicated they will advocate amendments, though the party’s posture concerning immigration has become more conservative since the 2020 election before becoming a wedge issue for last year’s contest between President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
The White House may not have to adopt a position related to the bill, with Republicans more likely to hold it so Trump can put his signature on it.
Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered last February while she was jogging at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant, José Antonio Ibarra. Ibarra was found guilty of three charges of felony murder, malice murder, false imprisonment, kidnapping, aggravated assault with intent to rape, and other charges with state Judge H. Patrick Haggard sentencing him to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Biden’s response to Riley’s death has been criticized with the president mispronouncing her name as “Lincoln” during last year’s State of the Union address.
“An innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal! That’s right? But how many of thousands of people being killed by illegals?” Biden said.
Biden later walked back his use of the term “illegal” to describe Ibarra in an interview with MSNBC.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” he said. “Look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I’m not going to do. What I won’t do. I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing. We have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don’t share his view at all.”
The Laken Riley Act would reform federal law to require the Department of Homeland Security‘s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take custody of people in the country illegally and detain them over theft-related crimes, with an ICE analysis projecting the cost of additional beds and personnel would be about $3 billion.
