The Republican-controlled US Congress handed President Donald Trump an early win in his crackdown on illegal immigration on Wednesday, passing a bill to expand pretrial detention for foreign criminal suspects, media reported.

This will mark President Trump’s first piece of legislation to be signed into law during his second term.

The Laken Riley Act mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes.

The bill passed the Senate with a 64-35 vote earlier this week, and the House of Representatives approved it with a 263-256 vote.

Receiving bipartisan support, the bill saw 46 Democrats voting in favor in the House and 12 supporting it in the Senate, alongside Republicans.

The new law aligns with President Trump’s stance on immigration, following his executive orders on his first day in office announcing mass deportations and sending US troops to the southern border to prevent illegal crossings.

The Laken Riley Act is named after 22-year-old student Laken Riley, who was murdered by an undocumented Venezuelan man wanted for shoplifting.

Twenty-six-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra was convicted of Riley’s murder after she was found dead in a wooded area at the University of Georgia in Athens.

The new law will require US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain illegal immigrants who are arrested or charged with certain crimes, including burglary, theft, larceny, and shoplifting, or who have been accused of assaulting a law enforcement officer.

The bill was passed in both houses after a modification to the original document expanded mandatory detention to include crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury.

President Trump had cited the Laken Riley case during his election campaign in November as proof of immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the country.

During the proceedings, Democrats raised concerns that the law’s implementation would cost $83 billion in the first three years, which is more than the annual budget of the Homeland Security Department.

Several members of Congress also argued that the new law would violate due process.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez contended that detaining people who had been accused but not convicted of a crime would be a “fundamental suspension of a core American value.”