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PHOENIX — President-elect Donald Trump's push for deportations has won support from an unexpected place: Arizona's top three elected Democrats. The state's first Latino senator, Ruben Gallego, announced Wednesday he is co-sponsoring a bill that would expose more undocumented immigrants to deportation. Sen.
Mark Kelly and Gov. Katie Hobbs also got on board. A Kelly spokesman said the senator "looks forward to.
.. other solutions to secure the border and fix our broken immigration system.
" You could say elections have consequences, but some Democratic allies are outraged. "It's a giant kick in the gut," said Ray Ybarra Maldonado, a longtime Phoenix immigration attorney. He reserved most of his scorn for Gallego.
"What have we been fighting for all these years, to get more people of color positions of power, when the first move they make is to stab our community in the back? In office less than a week, Gallego is now co-sponsoring his first Senate bill. He voted for the same bill last year in the House, during his campaign for the U.S.
Senate. The Republican-backed and Trump-approved Laken Riley Act would expose more undocumented immigrants to deportation. Under current law, federal immigration authorities can take custody of undocumented immigrants accused of felony crimes, from murder to armed robbery to drug trafficking.
The new legislation expands the list to low-level, non-violent offenses like theft and shoplifting. An arrest could suffice to put an undocumented immigrant on a path to deportation. Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was killed last year by a 26-year-old undocumented immigrant previously arrested for theft.
Trump transformed Riley's death into a cause during the presidential campaign, amplifying his argument for mass deportations. Maldonado says the legislation wouldn't create a fast track for deportations. Instead, larger numbers of federal detainees would have to wait for hearings before an immigration judge.
"It's a big victory for the private prison industry," he said. "They're going to get more beds filled up. They're going to get more people that they can get a profit off of.
" The Trump transition team has provided no information on the scope or funding of its mass deportation plans. The House bill passed Tuesday with bipartisan support. On the Senate side, Gallego and Kelly are joined by other Democrats who support the legislation.
Chad Heywood, a Republican consultant at Camelback Strategy and former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, said it was a "no-brainer" for border-state Democrats to support the Laken Riley bill. "If you were to track an issue that Trump and Republicans consistently ran on that became a mainstream issue, it was immigration enforcement," Heywood said. "There was a broad consensus by voters of all stripes that the border needed to be secured.
" He recalled that former Democratic governor Janet Napolitano also got tough on border security in the mid-2000s as she prepared to run for re-election. Hobbs is running for a second term in 2026. "It makes perfect sense for Democrat leaders to get on board and support it," Heywood said.
"It's where the voters are on this issue." The bill heads to the Republican-controlled Senate on Friday, where Democrats are needed to advance the bill to a full vote. The Laken Riley Act could be the first piece of legislation signed into law by Donald Trump when he takes office Jan.
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