Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut said she regrets voting for the Laken Riley Act, a bipartisan bill requiring authorities to detain illegal migrants charged with committing various criminal offenses.
Hayes said she “probably would have voted differently” when asked at a town hall by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins if the legislation violated illegal migrants’ due process rights. The lawmaker’s apparent flip-flop comes as Congressional Democrats are telling voters they want a secure border but are consistently voting against legislation that Republican lawmakers argue will deport criminal illegal migrants and help lower the number of border crossings.
“I voted for that piece of legislation because of a very specific provision, and it was if it caused injury or death to a police officer, which was one small piece of it,” Haynes said referring to a provision of the bill requiring the detention of an illegal migrant accused, charged or convicted of causing the death of law enforcement. “As I’ve thought about it over the last couple months, I probably would have voted differently.”
“It’s a vote that I regret,” Haynes continued. “But coming into this Congress, I trusted that this administration … that they wanted to have border security, they wanted to work with Democrats that we could actually move forward. I’m not really sure of that, because I’ve seen the rhetoric that has come out and the attacks that have been targeted toward immigrants, so I’m very cautious and careful when I’m negotiating my votes moving forward.”
Hayes, serving her fourth term, represents a somewhat competitive Connecticut district that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates as “Likely Democrat” heading into the midterms. The congresswoman discussed her apparently changing views on the immigration enforcement bill during a bipartisan CNN town hall alongside Democratic Rep. Derek Tran of California and Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania, who all also represent “battleground” districts.
The Laken Riley Act was the first piece of legislation advanced by the 119th Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump. The law is named in honor of a University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an illegal migrant while out on a run near her college campus in February 2024.
The law’s proponents have argued that if similar legislation had been signed into law prior to Riley’s murder, her killer, a Venezuelan national, would have been deported upon being arrested for allegedly shoplifting at a Walmart in Athens, Georgia. The migrant murdered Riley nearly two years after the arrest.
The Trump administration has notably moved with urgency to get border crossings at the southern border to record lows. March saw a 95% decrease in border patrol encounters compared to the same time last year under former President Joe Biden’s leadership, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
Hayes also voted against legislation in February requiring stiffer criminal penalties on migrants who flee border patrol agents while operating motor vehicles. Fifty of her Democratic colleagues backed this immigration enforcement bill.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told the DCNF Thursday that his conference wants to “secure the border” despite leading every House Democrat in voting against Republicans’ budget resolution that would have unlocked up to $175 billion in border-security related funding for federal immigration authorities.
“We believe we have a broken immigration system and we need to fix it in a comprehensive and in a bipartisan way,” Jeffries told the DCNF at his weekly press conference Thursday.
Jeffries also led most House Democrats this Congress in voting against the bipartisan Laken Riley Act and the Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act.
“And also we believe that we always defend Dreamers, farmworkers, and law-abiding immigrant families and protect them from aggressive overreach from the Trump administration,” Jeffries continued. “Those are the principles that we have consistently articulated publicly and privately to our Republican colleagues that it relates to finding some common ground on the immigration issue.”
Mackenzie and Lawler took Haynes to task for worrying about the due process rights of illegal migrants over the safety of American citizens like Riley during the town hall.
“Did Laken Riley get due process?” Mackenzie asked Haynes during the townhall after she doubled down on her concerns with the Laken Riley Act despite initially supporting it. “The answer is no.”
“It was only Democrats that voted against that bill [Laken Riley Act],” Mackenzie said during the town hall. “All Republicans voted for it. And so, you do see that difference and distinction between the two parties nowadays.”
Andi Shae Napier contributed to this report.
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