In summary:
The Senate passed a bill allocating $70 billion to fund ICE and the Border Patrol over the next three years, strengthening the federal government's ability to enforce immigration laws.
For states like North Carolina, where transfers of locally detained individuals to ICE have increased, the measure could translate into more resources for arrests, case processing, and deportations.
The project still needs to be approved by the House of Representatives.
The Senate passed a bill to fund President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agencies early Friday, after weeks of delays and a strong backlash against an unrelated $1.776 billion reconciliation fund that threatened to derail the proposal.
The senators voted 52-47 in favor of passing the law. $70,000 billion that will fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol over the next three years, until the end of Trump's term, after Democrats blocked those funds for months. The bill will now go to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to be taken up next week.
The final vote came shortly before 5:00 a.m., after Republicans narrowly defeated multiple attempts by members of both parties to add to the bill a provision that would permanently ban Trump's reconciliation fund for allies who believe they have been politically persecuted.
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Republicans overcome obstacles
Republicans overcame the last major hurdle overnight when they defeated an amendment proposed by one of their own members, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, that would have redirected settlement payments to law enforcement officers who were injured when a mob of Trump supporters seeking to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The amendments in the Senate They tested the party's unity and complicated what should have been an easy vote for Republicans, who wanted to keep the focus on immigration enforcement in an election year. Instead, they spent nearly a full day haggling among themselves over whether to block the reconciliation fund, even after acting attorney general Todd Blanche announced earlier this week that he would not pursue it.
“This would have been done several hours ago if we hadn’t had to deal with some of the issues surrounding the fund,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said shortly before midnight.
Thune himself has criticized the fund, which was part of a settlement in Trump's lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns and has angered many of his Republican colleagues. But for weeks he has pressured Republican senators to keep the bill focused on funding ICE and the Border Patrol and to avoid adding new provisions that could complicate its passage in the House of Representatives.
Even so, a group of Republican senators lobbied throughout the day and into the night to block disbursements from the fund through legislation. This effort came after Trump, who has been at odds with the Senate in recent weeks, sowed further doubt about the fund's future on Wednesday—just after the Senate voted to begin debating the bill—when he told reporters it was “very important” and said, “I don’t know” if it’s dead or on hold.
Senators reject multiple attempts to ban the conciliation fund
The first vote on Thursday morning, a Democratic attempt to ban the reconciliation fund, remained open for several hours as Cassidy and two other Republican senators decided whether to support it. The Democratic motion was narrowly defeated when Cassidy ultimately voted against it, while the other two senators—Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, both up for reelection this year—voted in favor.
The Senate then rejected a second amendment by Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, which would have also banned the reconciliation fund but would have transferred the money to a separate anti-fraud fund at the Justice Department. A majority of Democrats voted against the amendment, ensuring its defeat, but more than 10 Republicans supported it.
Tillis argued that the fund is a political burden for the party.
“If Blanche says this is largely inoperative, why not seize this moment and enshrine it in law?” Tillis asked. “Otherwise, you’re forcing every one of our members who’s campaigning to deal with this between now and Election Day, and that doesn’t make sense for something the Justice Department says it won’t pursue.”
Cassidy's amendment to compensate injured police officers was a direct rebuke, as payments from the Trump fund could potentially have gone to Trump supporters who assaulted police officers and stormed the Capitol on January 6. Cassidy lost his reelection bid last month after Trump endorsed a rival in the primaries.
Cassidy said that, despite Blanche's comments, the fund remains part of an existing agreement and "can absolutely be used."
The Senate rejected several other Democratic attempts to block or limit the fund, including amendments to prohibit payments to defendants from the January 6 shooting who injured law enforcement officers.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Republicans are now “leaving taxpayers to rely on nothing more than a promise from Donald Trump’s personal fixer. That’s not accountability. That’s a free pass.”
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Additional funding for ICE and the Border Patrol has been delayed for months.
The enactment of the bill to fund ICE and the Border Patrol will end the blockade by Democrats, who were demanding policy changes after the shooting deaths of two protesters by federal agents in January.
Senate Republicans used a complex procedural maneuver to circumvent the filibuster and pass the budget bill without Democratic votes. But it took weeks to bring the bill to the Senate floor as Republicans navigated various obstacles to its passage created by Trump and the White House—including a $1.000 billion proposal for White House security and Trump's ballroom that they ultimately rejected, and the fierce bipartisan backlash against the reconciliation fund.
Democrats point out that any funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security must impose restrictions on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal agents and greater use of warrants, among other demands.
After federal agents shot and killed protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Trump agreed to a Democratic request to separate the Homeland Security bill from a broader spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations stalled, and the department's funding expired in mid-February without an agreement on changes to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement tactics.
Congress finally funded the rest of the Department of Homeland Security in late April with Democratic support, but ICE and the Border Patrol have remained without regular funding.
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After the storm
A year ago, Hurricane Helene struck western North Carolina. The Latino community responded with something stronger than the storm: solidarity.
🎧 In this episode, learn how Latino organizations transformed crisis into resilience.
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