“That’s the strength of the Senate—leveraging the power we have even in the minority to improve legislation before us,” Senator Alex Padilla of California told me in a statement. “If we can’t secure the necessary changes, we must stand united and be prepared to reject the bill.”
Yes, and if they don’t band together, even that limited power dissipates. As one Democratic aide told me, this only works if 41 of them are willing to oppose final passage. “It’s a real test for the Democratic caucus,” this aide said, adding that “if this doesn’t go well,” Trump and Republicans will take note: “They’ll just run the table on immigration if the signal is that we’re not willing to fight.”
In this environment, this is a challenging test for Democrats. What happened to Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was murdered by Jose Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant who’d committed minor crimes, is horrific, and no lawmaker wants to face the ads that will be unleashed by a “no” vote. But as The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell details, it’s not clear that these provisions would have made any difference in Ibarra’s case, which is already extraordinarily unusual to begin with. This story, as awful as it is, should not be the basis for major, consequential policy changes.
