Booker, Kim vote for Marco Rubio, against Laken Riley Act

Within hours of Donald Trump’s swearing-in yesterday as the 47th President of the United States, the U.S. Senate hit the ground running on two critical votes, one to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and another to pass the illegal immigration-focused Laken Riley Act – and the former came with the support of both of New Jersey’s senators.

Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker joined all 99 senators (Vice President JD Vance’s seat in Ohio is vacant) in unanimously supporting Rubio, who was until recently their Senate colleague. While Rubio was a conservative Republican during his fourteen years in the Senate, he maintained good relations with his fellow senators, allowing him to become the first member of Trump’s Cabinet to be confirmed.

“Senator Rubio’s qualifications and dedication to serving our country has earned him my vote to be our next Secretary of State,” Kim, once a State Department official himself under Barack Obama, said in a statement on his vote. “In my conversations with Senator Rubio, we had areas of disagreement no doubt, but I found him to be well versed in the deep challenges our nation faces globally.”

Booker had the opportunity to question Rubio as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Rubio reaffirmed his commitment to remaining in NATO and standing against Chinese influence during a confirmation hearing last week. Booker, the chair of the committee’s Africa-focused subcommittee last Congress, pressed Rubio for his views on how he would approach the rapidly growing continent from a foreign policy perspective, and singled out Sudan and Haiti as two countries in particular distress.

“The president made a great decision in choosing you,” Booker told Rubio at the hearing. “You’re a thought leader in foreign policy.”

Rubio’s confirmation marks the beginning of a long stretch of confirmation votes that the Senate will take up in the coming months, most of which won’t be as easy or noncontroversial. (It was also the first time that Kim, who was sworn into the Senate last month, took a vote on a Cabinet nomination.) More votes this week are expected on other national security nominees like CIA nominee John Ratcliffe and Homeland Security nominee Kristi Noem, the latter of whom got Kim’s vote in a Homeland Security hearing yesterday.

The Laken Riley Act, meanwhile, is the first big legislative item of the second Trump presidency; if enacted, it would enable immigration officials to detain undocumented immigrants charged with certain theft-related crimes. It passed the Senate last night on a 64-35 vote, with 12 mostly swing-state Democratic senators voting in support; Booker and Kim both voted no, saying that the bill could have major unintended (and intended) consequences for immigrant communities and that Republicans refused to come to the negotiating table on Democratic amendments.

“The bill’s provisions open the door to awful abuses,” Booker said as part of a lengthy statement on the bill. “They serve as an invitation for domestic abusers, corrupt employers, and vigilante neighbors to threaten and falsely accuse undocumented people to exploit them or prompt their detention. And while the law is supposed to keep dangerous people from being in the country, it’ll be used against children and Dreamers who are here legally, too, and could start another family separation disaster all over again.”

Both Kim and Booker were among the act’s most committed opponents throughout the legislative process. When the bill first came up for a procedural vote to allow debate to begin, just nine senators voted against it – and Kim and Booker were both among the nine, an early signal of how New Jersey’s newly minted Senate delegation plans on dealing with the return of Trump and a GOP-led Senate.

“No doubt our immigration system is broken and the American people deserve bipartisan action, but this bill’s requirement for mandatory detention without bond for people including children accused but not convicted of non-violent misdemeanors like shoplifting goes against our Constitution,” Kim said after the bill passed last night. “We owe every American action, and there is a lot that we can do that would be in line with our Constitution that we should focus on.”

The amended bill now returns to the House, where it’s expected to pass easily after being approved in a prior vote two weeks ago. In that vote, most Democratic House members from New Jersey voted no and all Republican members voted yes; Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), who was not present for the vote, said he would have voted yes as well had he been there.