“Only Katie Britt could do it.”
Those words were spoken by many in the corridors, committee rooms, and chambers of the U.S. Capitol Building last week after the Senate voted to invoke cloture and move forward with passing the Laken Riley Act.
Alabama’s junior senator planted her flag and impressed politicos, pundits, and constituents alike when she built a historic bipartisan coalition supporting her strong bill that combats both illegal immigration and rampant crime. There is a reason experts are saying this is the most significant piece of border and immigration enforcement legislation to pass Congress since 1996.
Britt’s bill would require the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known colloquially as ICE, to detain and deport illegal migrants who are arrested, charged, or convicted of burglary, larceny, shoplifting, theft, assaulting a police officer, or any other crime that results in serious bodily injury or death.
The measure is named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered by an illegal migrant from Venezuela while jogging on the University of Georgia campus. Her killer had previously been charged with shoplifting while illegally on U.S. soil, and Riley would be alive today if Britt’s legislation was in effect at the time of that crime.
It also sets up a mechanism that could hold open borders federal officials – think of future leftwing administrations – accountable and enable states like Texas, and Alabama, to seek injunctive relief from the judiciary if mandatory immigration law is not being enforced.
Chuck Schumer would not allow the bill to see the Senate floor when Britt originally introduced the bill last year, but she continued to work her colleagues, press her case, and build momentum for the commonsense legislation.
Reaching across the aisle, she even convinced Sen. John Fetterman (D – Pennsylvania), who has publicly urged his fellow Democrats to moderate their extreme leftist views, and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D – Arizona), a border state freshman who proudly wears the label of “fierce liberal combatant,” to sign on as co-sponsors.
Known for her passionate advocacy on behalf of issues in which she believes, Britt has already built a stockpile of trust with her fellow senators and brought already established relationships with many veteran lawmakers from her previous days on Capitol Hill as chief of staff for former Sen. Richard Shelby.
That trust was in evidence when Fetterman and Gallego were joined by fellow Democrat senators that included Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and Mark Warner of Virginia in voting to move the bill toward a final vote within the body.
That final Senate vote came Monday, and now once it returns to the House to receive final passage, the Laken Riley Act will likely be the first congressional bill that newly-sworn President Donald Trump gets to sign into law in his second term.
At a time when congressional politics remain so deeply partisan and polarized, Britt’s assemblage of bi-partisan support for a bill that so many on the far left find distasteful — the ACLU called it “extreme and reactive” — is a remarkable feat and a testament to her skills, talents, and, quite frankly, her personal charm.
When you combine her impressive legislative success with her recent assignment to the prestigious Senate Judiciary Committee, her selection as a deputy whip within the Senate Republican leadership, her new chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, and her role as a vice chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, it becomes quite evident that Britt is on the fast track to the highest reaches of the upper chamber — especially when you consider she is a freshman member who was elected just two short years ago.
If this trend continues, the phrase “Only Katie Britt could do it” may soon be repeated over and over again, much like a political mantra among her ever-growing army of supporters and admirers both in Washington, D.C. and across Alabama.
Andrew Jones is a Republican state senator representing District 10, which includes Cherokee, DeKalb, and Etowah counties. He is a small business owner and farmer.
