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Trump Signs the Laken Riley Act, Jan. 29, 2025

January 29, 2025 · The White House · 0:33:07

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law at the White House on Jan. 29, 2025, carried on the White House channel, hosting Laken Riley’s family for the signing; the upload’s description states the act mandates the detention and deportation of illegal alien criminals and allows states to sue if immigration laws are not enforced. The President said the mandate he had been given was to save the country, noted more than 350 executive actions in the first week, and framed this law as the fight to ensure such a tragedy never happens again, as he stated it.

Under the law as he described it at the signing, the Department of Homeland Security will be required to detain all illegal aliens arrested for theft, burglary, larceny, shoplifting, assaulting a police officer, murder, or any crime resulting in death or serious injury; and, for the first time, state governments can sue the federal government for immediate injunctive relief if a future administration refuses to enforce the immigration laws. He thanked the 12 Senate Democrats and 48 House Democrats who voted for the bill, as he stated the bipartisan margins, calling it a landmark law that would save countless innocent American lives.

Why it matters

The Laken Riley Act is the first bill the President signed in his second term and the statutory foundation of the detention policy: its detention mandate and its state-suit mechanism, described by the President at the signing, are the provisions this chronicle tracks in enforcement and in court.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: the Jan. 29, 2025 signing of the Laken Riley Act (mandatory detention for the listed offenses; state injunctive-relief suits) - flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Signs the Laken Riley Act” (YouTube, 2025-01-29) - official description and broadcast transcript as aired.