GOP sens call on Schumer, Dems to take up border bills as they tout immigration vigilance

Republican senators took to the Senate floor on Wednesday and called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to bring several pieces of border legislation for votes in the chamber as Vice President Kamala Harris and vulnerable Democrats across the country make commitments to supporting border security.

Led by Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., the group planned to ask that a number of strict bills regarding the border, immigration, and cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) be considered, including the Laken Riley Act and the WALL Act, according to remarks provided by Britt’s office.

“Vice President Harris now says she has changed policy positions on some of our country’s most pressing issues,” read Britt’s prepared floor remarks, which she gave prior to making unanimous consent requests to advance the bills. “Let’s see if her own party believes her claims, or whether they’ll defend the radical policy positions Vice President Harris has long held and the Biden-Harris Administration has imposed for these painful past few years.”

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The Alabama senator was joined by Sens. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., James Lankford, R-Okla, and Mike Lee, R-Utah. 

All the Republicans’ requests to advance the bills by unanimous consent were objected to. 

Britt couldn’t bring up the Laken Riley Act due to a time cutoff.

“Senate Democrats talked down the clock. They’re running from their unpopular opposition to the Laken Riley Act just like Vice President Harris is running from her extreme record,” Britt said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “They’re afraid to expose that the very policies Vice President Harris has held — and the actions of her administration — are actively leading to tragedy after tragedy. I will move for passage of the Laken Riley Act in the coming days.”

The Laken Riley Act was named for a 22-year-old female college student in Georgia who was found dead on the University of Georgia’s campus in February. An illegal immigrant, Jose Ibarra, faces 10 counts following her death and has pleaded not guilty. 

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Laken Riley poses for a photo posted to Facebook. Riley, a nursing student at the University of Georgia, was found dead near a lake on campus on Feb. 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 theft, burglary, larceny or shoplifting offenses. 

Vulnerable Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., made headlines in May when he came out in support of the bill, despite blocking a vote in March on a modified version of it in the form of an amendment to a $1.2 trillion spending package. 

The procedural vote was struck down along party lines — with Tester voting against it. 

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Jose Ibarra is pictured in the moments before he entered a not guilty plea on Friday, May 31. Ibarra is accused of 10 counts in the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley. (Pool)

He notably faces an uphill battle in the Montana Senate race, with his opponent, former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, beating him in new polls and top political handicappers giving Republicans an advantage in the state. 

While Tester committed to supporting the bill if it came for a stand-alone vote, such votes are increasingly rare in the upper chamber and even more so when they are priorities of the minority party. 

Meanwhile, the WALL Act would provide $25 billion in funds for building the southern border wall.

Schumer’s office did not tell Fox News Digital whether he would bring any of the Republican bills, such as the Laken Riley Act or the WALL Act, for votes following Republicans’ request. However, the majority leader has been unwilling to schedule votes on them thus far, indicating he doesn’t plan to. 

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Laken Riley, left, and Chuck Schumer (Getty Images)

Harris and vulnerable Senate Democrats have used a failed immigration bill, which they have touted as “bipartisan,” despite only two Republicans voting in its favor on the most recent procedural vote, to back up their claims of wanting to secure the southern border on the campaign trail. 

Lankford, who took the floor on Wednesday with Britt, was one of the negotiators of that bill, along with Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. In recent floor remarks on the subject, 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 a single second of those negotiations — not one second,” he said. 

The negotiated bill has been blasted by numerous Republican senators, some of whom claimed it would actually exacerbate the current situation at the southern border. Some of those GOP senators who supported pieces of the bill also suggested that the administration would not properly implement them and would use the bill’s passage as a reason not to act further on the border.