By Lindsey McPherson (The Washington Times)
The Senate early Friday passed a $70 billion package to fund immigration enforcement agencies through the remainder of President Trump’s term, after pulling an all-nighter.
The measure now heads to the House, which already left town for the weekend and is not expected to take up the bill until early next week.
The Senate’s 52-47 vote to pass the bill came after a roughly 19-hour “vote-a-rama” in which senators could offer unlimited motions or amendments related to the bill – a quirk of the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.
The extended floor action came with several politically charged votes, including several failed proposals to legislatively nix the Justice Department’s $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund, block taxpayer funding for the new White House ballroom, remove William J. Pulte as acting director of National Intelligence and redirect funds toward affordable housing programs.
In the end, no changes to the measure were adopted, except for a substitute amendment containing minor technical tweaks.
Republicans decided more than two months ago to use the budget reconciliation process to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, after Democrats filibustered annual appropriations for the agencies.
That led to a 76-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both agencies, before Republicans gave into Democrats’ suggestion to fund the non-immigration enforcement agencies separately.
However, Democrats did not win any of the legislative guardrails they were seeking to place on the president’s deportation force after immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens protesting enforcement activity in Minneapolis early this year.
The budget reconciliation package the Senate passed Friday includes $38.6 billion for ICE, $26 billion for CBP and another $5 billion for DHS to use for immigration enforcement as it sees fit.
The money is available to spend immediately after the bill is signed into law through fiscal 2029, which will ensure ICE and CBP are funded for the rest of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to join all Democrats in voting against the bill. She said she supports funding ICE and CBP but is concerned that doing so through multiyear, mandatory funding sets a bad precedent and could make lawmakers less inclined to resolve partisan differences over annual appropriations bills.
“My fear is we have entered down a slope that is so slippery we’re never going to be able to crawl our way back out of it, and I don’t like it,” the senior appropriator said.
This article was made available to WMAL via The Washington Times.
