It is striking that the very first bill before Congress in the new session, in which the Republicans have majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is an immigration bill.
The bill requires the detention of anyone, including asylum seekers, if they have been accused of theft, burglary or shoplifting. So the killer of Laken Riley would have been off the streets.
So to the politics. The Laken Riley bill passed through the House of Representatives last Tuesday with the support of 48 Democrats. This matters. It feels as if the Democrats, or a significant number of them, are now willing to accept that the public mood on illegal immigration has hardened.
But it is not easy for the Democrats. In the wider party ecosystem there are plenty of very loud voices raised in opposition. They point out that the bill mandates incarceration on merely the accusation of theft, not an actual conviction. So might some blameless person, living a decent American life having crossed illegally many years ago, find themselves falsely accused of shoplifting and stuck in jail, perhaps even deported, as a result? Is that the America that the party now supports?
So for the Democrats this is a tough test. If they help this bill get onto Donald Trump’s desk in the Oval Office on 20 January it might become the very first bill he signs and the Democratic party will have enabled something that many of its supporters abhor. There will be much gnashing of teeth and many party rows.
Donald Trump might have just derailed his own campaign
Read MoreOr might Laken Riley, if passed, provide an off ramp for Trump? He will almost certainly sign an executive order or two, bypassing Congress, to enforce tougher border control. And that would be popular: polls last years suggested a majority of Americans now approve of the Trump idea of a full border wall with Mexico (it was never a majority during his first term in office) and most also think asylum seekers should have their requests processed outside the USA.
If Laken Riley passes, there will be plenty more that Donald Trump says about immigration, but perhaps not much more that he does. It would be a win, a big win, potentially on day one. One of the early biographies of Trump was entitled Never Enough – on this occasion it might be.
Justin Webb presents the Americast podcast on BBC Sounds
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