Republican senators will return to the Senate floor on Wednesday and urge Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to discuss a number of issues. Some excerpts from the border law A vote in the House is likely after Vice President Kamala Harris and vulnerable Democrats across the country pledged to support border security.
Led by Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., the group will demand that several tough bills related to the border, immigration, and cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) be considered, including the Laken Riley Act and the WALL Act, according to comments provided by Britt’s office.
“Vice President Harris now says she has changed policy positions on some of our country’s most important issues,” Britt will say in remarks to the House before requesting unanimous consent to advance the bills. “Let’s see whether her own party believes her claims, or whether they will defend the radical policy positions that Vice President Harris has long held and the Biden-Harris Administration has implemented over these painful last few years.”
Republican senators will call on Schumer and Democrats to vote on the Republican-backed border bill. (Reuters)
The Alabama senator will be joined by Senators Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., James Lankford, R-Okla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah.
The Laken Riley Act was named after a 22-year-old female college student from Georgia who was found dead on the University of Georgia campus in February. Jose Ibarra, an illegal immigrant, faces 10 counts following her death and has been jailed. pleaded not guilty,
Laken Riley poses for a photo posted on Facebook. Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, was found dead near a lake on campus on February 22. An illegal immigrant has been charged with her murder. (Laken Riley/Facebook)
The bill would require ICE to detain illegal immigrants who have committed crimes such as theft, burglary, robbery or shoplifting.
Vulnerable Senator Jon Tester, D-Mont., made headlines in May when he appeared Support for the BillHowever, voting on a revised version was put on hold as an amendment to a $1.2 trillion spending package passed in March.
The procedural vote was rejected along party lines — Tester voted against it.
Jose Ibarra is pictured moments before entering a plea of not guilty on Friday, May 31. Ibarra is charged with 10 counts in the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. (Pool)
He faces an uphill battle in the Montana Senate race, where his opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, is beating him in new polls and top political oddsmakers are giving Republicans a lead in the state.
Though Tester has committed to support the bill if it comes to a vote alone, such votes are becoming rare in the upper house, and even more so when they are priorities of the minority party.
Schumer’s office did not tell Fox News Digital if he would bring any of the Republican bills, such as the Laken Riley Act or the WALL Act, up for a vote following Republican requests. However, the majority leader has not yet been willing to schedule votes on them, indicating he has no plans.
Laken Riley, left, and Chuck Schumer (Getty Images)
Harris and vulnerable Senate Democrats have used a failed immigration bill they described as “bipartisan” during the campaign to support their claims to secure the southern border even though only two Republicans voted in favor of it in a recent procedural vote.
Click here to get the Fox News app
Lankford, who will take the stage with Britt on Wednesday, was one of the negotiators of that bill along with Senators Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. In recent forum remarks on the topic, he called out Harris for using the border bill in her campaign. “I mean no disrespect to the vice president, but we had four months of negotiations, and she neither initiated those negotiations nor participated in one second of those negotiations — not one second,” he said.
The bill has been strongly objected to by several Republican senators, some of whom have claimed that it will worsen the current situation at the southern border. Republican senators who support parts of the bill also suggested that the administration will not properly enforce them and will use the bill’s passage as an excuse to not take further action at the border.
