Laken Riley Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 53, I call up the bill (S. 5) to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. 5.

Mr. Speaker, S. 5 bears the name of Laken Riley, murdered by one of the 8 million illegal aliens that Joe Biden and his Democratic supporters deliberately allowed into our country over these last 4 years.

In Laken's case, the murderer was paroled into this country through a shocking abuse of that power. He was repeatedly arrested for theft and other crimes in sanctuary jurisdictions and each time released back onto our streets. Just months before he murdered Laken, he was arrested for theft, but ICE couldn't take him into custody because of the Biden- Harris administration's policies that shielded such monsters from arrest and deportation.

This measure, first introduced by Representative Mike Collins, would require ICE detention for illegal aliens who are charged with, arrested for, or convicted of any burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting offense.

The Democrats have argued that the mere accusation of committing a crime should not be grounds for detention and that shoplifting is no big deal. They ignore the fact that every illegal alien is currently required to be detained by current law throughout the pendency of their asylum claims.

The Democrats have thumbed their noses at this law for the past 4 years. Their excuse is that they were prioritizing detaining more dangerous offenders. This bill does exactly that, yet they still oppose it.

During his first term, President Trump proved that the President, on his own authority, can secure our borders. President Biden proved that a President who is determined to make a mockery of our immigration laws can willfully open our borders to the most violent criminals, terrorists, gangs, and cartels on this planet and then use the Democrats' sanctuary laws to protect them.

This national nightmare ended at noon on Monday, but what of future Presidents? This bill ensures that what happened to Laken Riley cannot happen again should another Joe Biden disgrace the Presidency.

Our Senate colleagues have added to the Laken Riley Act parts of Sarah's Law, introduced by Representative Randy Feenstra and Senator Joni Ernst, to mandate detention for illegal aliens who commit any offense that involves death or serious bodily injury.

Sarah's Law was named after Sarah Root. On January 31, 2016, as Sarah drove home after celebrating her college graduation, an illegal alien, who was street racing while drunk, slammed into her SUV, snapping Sarah's spine and fracturing her skull. Sarah died 4 days later, on February 4.

Within hours of her death, a judge set the illegal's bond at $50,000 because no detainer was filed despite a desperate request by local police to do so.

The administration defended this dereliction of duty because the illegal alien had not been convicted of a criminal charge and, therefore, was not an ``enforcement priority.''

S. 5 closes this loophole by requiring detention for illegal aliens, like Sarah Root's killer, who are arrested for, charged with, admitted to, or convicted of any crime that resulted in someone's death or serious bodily injury.

In addition, this bill includes elements of Representative Jeff Van Drew's Detain and Deport Illegal Aliens Who Assault Cops Act, which passed the House last year and applies the same mandate for those who assault law enforcement officials.

This bill would also allow States to bring a civil action against derelict Federal officers who refuse to enforce immigration law. This was first introduced by Representatives Dan Bishop and Chip Roy in the SUE for Immigration Enforcement Act. That bill also passed the House twice as part of the Laken Riley Act. That bill was also killed by Senate Democrats last year.

Whether it is sober reflection or perhaps the sobering results of the November election, a handful of Democrats in both the House and the Senate have now come over to support this law. We welcome them. We wish them well in convincing the majority of their party that they need to change course, if not for the good of our country, then at least for the good of themselves. We will take their support any way we can get it.

I have every confidence that President Trump will end this scourge upon our Nation during the next 4 years. This law, and the others that will follow it, will ensure that no future President will be able to unleash upon our country what Joe Biden and his Democratic supporters did.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the so-called bipartisan legislation that the gentleman refers to would have made it impossible for President Trump to have taken the actions he has just taken to secure our border until illegal immigration exceeded 4,000 entries a day. That is why it collapsed in the Senate and it was ultimately disavowed by its own author.

The gentleman is correct to lament the terrible violence in our Nation, especially in our dangerous Democratic cities. So here is a modest proposal: Take the criminals off the streets, like Laken Riley's killer, which is exactly what this bill does.
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I remind the gentleman that current law already requires every illegal immigrant to be detained. That law is simply not being enforced. This bill says that if that illegal alien who is supposed to be in custody anyway is arrested for other crimes, then they really have to be taken off the streets.

If this bill had been law, then Laken Riley would be alive today.

Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, these are not prepared notes, but I wanted to address a few of the things that the ranking member, Congressman Raskin, mentioned. It seems to me that from what I hear on the other side is everything but really dealing with and focusing on what this bill says and what it does.

I want to talk about inflation which, by the way, was created on that other side, food prices and energy and utilities, all of it. I want to talk about all that.

I want to talk about gun violence. I am willing to debate gun violence for hours and discuss the issue, but definitely even on that issue, we don't want to speak about the liberal policies that exist in so many urban areas where we let out violent criminals over and over and over again and change very often felonies to misdemeanors.

Mr. Speaker, if you want to know about gun violence, that is what gun violence does. That is what gun violence is created by, so much that is happening there. Their answer would be to put more gun laws in place that inflict more regulation upon honest, good gun owners who don't ever do anything to anybody. It would be to impinge on Second Amendment rights. Nevertheless, I don't want to talk about that.

I want to talk about this act because I know we are on the right side of this. Laken Riley was killed while going for a jog. That is the issue. An innocent woman who never did anything harmful to anybody in her life, who wanted to be a nurse, who wanted to help other people, and who couldn't even get the last damn telephone call from her mother, was murdered.

Then I hear from the ranking member: Well, the vast majority of illegals don't commit crimes.

My God, I hope not, because we have got close to 10 million of them, as best as we can tell. There are hundreds who are on the terror watch list and thousands who have committed crimes. That is where the problems really do exist, and that is unacceptable.

The previous administration has recklessly abused the mass parole policies. It has flooded our Nation with illegal immigrants. It never should have happened, and it impinges and hurts the security of the American people. I am here to represent, and we are here to represent the American people.

Across the country, we heard about the woman that was set on fire in New York City. What was the first thing that the city of New York did with its liberal policies? They refused to honor ICE's detainer request for the man responsible for setting another human being on fire.

Our immigration laws have to be upheld. Failure to do so is why Laken Riley is not alive today. It is why Washington State Trooper Christopher Gadd's family will never see him. His children and his wife will never know him anymore. He is gone.

It is why, when Laken Riley struggled for almost a half hour, when she was beaten, when she was disfigured, when her head and skull was crushed, that we can't bring her back. We can't bring her life back.

I don't want to hear about all this other political stuff. I don't think the American people do. They want an answer.

Mr. VAN DREW. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to see that the Senate adopted the amendment that we wanted, which was to put into the bill the legislation that we had to detain and deport illegal aliens who assault cops. They have broken the law once, and now we are saying: My God, if you do it again, no, you are going to be detained, and you are going to be deported. A lot of Democrats are going to vote for it.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Greene).
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. He is the author of the Laken Riley Act in the House, representing her hometown and her grieving family.

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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

First, in response to my friend, I would say after the last 4 years in which the Democrats brought the full force of the government to intimidate social platforms, to shut down dissenting opinions, and stifle public debate, I would be a little more careful about invoking the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The gentleman offers us gun control as an antidote; we offer criminal control. Get the criminals off the streets, which is exactly what this bill does. I am sure that he must be very upset that Mr. Biden pardoned his son for gun crimes.

Mr. Speaker, to my Democratic colleagues who have joined Republicans to pass this bill into law, I thank them for standing up to the woke left of their party. That is a hard thing to do, especially when it exposes them to their insults and epithets and threats of political retribution. To the others, I ask how many more laws with names attached to them do we need to pass before you take this crisis seriously.

How many American citizens must die at the hands of illegal aliens before we all agree that these tragedies are fully preventable? Must the name of my child or their child be the one attached to an H.R. number or an S. number before Democrats can vote ``yes'' on these commonsense bills?

The fine point of the matter comes down to this: If this bill had been law, Jocelyn Nungaray, Sarah Root, Rachel Moran, Laken Riley, and many, many more such victims would be alive today because their killers would have been taken into custody. Under President Trump, they never would have been allowed into our country in the first place.

Mr. Speaker, I ask for adoption of this measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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