Forty-eight. That’s the number of Democrats who just joined the House majority to vote for a bill to deport criminal migrants — even those without a violent record. It’s a number that suggests that at least some Democrats are capitalizing on the lessons of Election Day. It also marks the bipartisan support for efforts to take back control of the border. It presents an opportunity for President Trump as well as the GOP for a policy win in Congress. 

The surge of Democratic support for the measure — named after a murdered 22-year-old Georgia woman, Laken Riley — follows an election in which the voters rebuked the party for its laxity on migration issues. Some top Democratic senators, in the aftermath of the vote, had begun “acknowledging their party committed ‘political malpractice’ by bungling the issue of border security,” the Hill newspaper reported.

The legislation that passed the House today will mandate that federal authorities detail illegal immigrants who are “charged with burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting,” the New York Times reports, “broadening the list of charges that would subject them to being held and potentially deported.” The goal is to prevent the release of criminal migrants like the Venezuelan Jose Antonio Ibarra, who was convicted of killing Riley.

Ibarra is one of the some 5 million illegal migrants to enter America under President Biden’s lax border policies. He arrived in September 2022, the BBC reported, but “was later released for further processing.” In September 2023 he was arrested at New York and charged with “acting in a manner to injure a child less than 17 and a motor vehicle license violation,” the BBC said, but then released by the NYPD. He murdered Riley in February 2024.

During the presidential campaign, Candidate Trump and Republicans pointed to Riley’s murder as evidence of Mr. Biden’s failed border policies. Yet many Democrats failed to take the issue seriously. They “previously denigrated measures like the Laken Riley Act,” Politico reports, as “messaging bills” that are “meant to stir up political passions, not to solve complex policy problems.” After the party’s defeat, some Democrats saw the light.

“We need to take a different approach with immigration,” was how one House Democrat, Representative Nikki Budzinski of Illinois, put it. Another Democrat who appears to grasp the need for a new tack is Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania. “I support giving authorities the tools to prevent tragedies like this one while we work on comprehensive solutions to our broken system,” he said Tuesday in a statement backing the Laken Riley legislation.

Support from Democratic senators like Mr. Fetterman is one reason why backers are optimistic that the measure will have enough support to clear a filibuster and pass the Senate. The upper chamber is slated to take up the bill on Friday. Even a liberal like Senator Ossoff, who represents Riley’s home state, is expected to vote to cut off debate on the bill, Politico reports. Two freshman senators, Elissa Slotkin and Ruben Gallego, are also likely yeas.

The bipartisan support for the Riley bill is a good sign for the fate of other GOP-backed border security measures, the Times reports, including measures to “to increase deportations,” to “hold asylum applicants outside of the United States,” as well as to cut off federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities. More broadly, the bill’s success appears to bolster chances for the kind of immigration reform backed by the Sun and other free-market conservatives.

This vision, which has emerged as a point of contention within the MAGA movement over H-1B visas, seeks to strike a balance between border security, including strict enforcement of laws against illegal immigration, while also opening the door wider to the legal migration that will allow America’s economy to thrive. “We need people,” is how the president-elect has explained the need for more human capital in America — provided they enter legally.