Credit: (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)WASHINGTON — Less than a week into the new Congress, Republicans are molding and drafting bills that stood no chance at passing a Democratic-majority Senate and gaining the signature of President Joe Biden.
The first salvo of what’s to come under a Republican-led Congress came Tuesday afternoon, when the House passed legislation to allow the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft, burglary, larceny or shoplifting, even if those charges had been dropped.
The bill (H.R. 29), the first piece of legislation to get a vote in the 119th Congress, passed 264-159, with broad support from Republicans and 48 “aye” votes from Democrats.
In a separate measure (H.Res.5) passed Friday to establish House rules for the next two years, Republicans telegraphed their priorities for this Congress, indicating they plan to deport undocumented immigrants, curtail abortion services, impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court, protect the use of hydraulic fracturing, legislate on transgender people in sports and require proof of citizenship to vote.
Republicans and President-elect Donald Trump have set out an ambitious schedule to complete this year. In particular, Republicans plan in the first months of the new year to pass one or two significant bills related to taxation, immigration and energy.
To pass their agenda, Republicans will likely have to use a procedural technique called “budget reconciliation” to leapfrog the Senate’s filibuster — the 60-vote threshold required for bills to advance.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) said in an interview Tuesday after the House vote it’s unclear if his party’s legislative agenda would be folded into one bill or two.
“Nobody knows for sure,” Van Drew said. “I believe we’re better off doing it in one big package.”
The immigration bill that passed the House Tuesday could get a vote in the Senate as soon as this week.
The House is out Wednesday in honor of the late President Jimmy Carter, whose body will lay in state in the Capitol rotunda before a Thursday funeral at the National Cathedral.
Van Drew and New Jersey’s two other Republicans, Reps. Chris Smith (D-4th) and Tom Kean (R-7th), voted for the immigration bill, which would also allow U.S. states to sue the federal government over immigration policy, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
All but two Democrats from New Jersey — Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th) and Mikie Sherril (D-11th) — voted against the bill. Neither voted on the bill Tuesday.
Gottheimer and Sherrill are running in a crowded Democratic primary race for New Jersey governor. They often voted with Republicans on immigration policy during the last Congress.
The pair also voted for a military policy bill in December that barred transgender children of military personnel from receiving gender-affirming care that can save lives.
Hardline immigration policy including mass deportation of undocumented immigrants was a central theme of the 2024 Trump presidential campaign, and Republicans in Washington have taken their cues from Trump on the issue.
After Trump criticized a bipartisan immigration deal being assembled last year in the Senate, it crumbled without a vote.
“The bipartisan bill was a bad bill,” Van Drew said Tuesday. “It didn’t rebuild the wall,” he said. “It was words, it wasn’t actions.”
Van Drew is a co-sponsor of the bill that cleared the House.
During floor debate, Democrats said the bill could allow the deportation of people even if prosecutors had dropped charges against them.
Republicans “want to change the law from someone who’s actually committed theft, or been convicted of theft, to people who’ve been charged with it even if the charges have been dropped or arrested for it even if charges were never brought,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD).
An estimated 428,000 undocumented immigrants live in New Jersey.
