Republicans’ sweeping immigration enforcement and border security package cleared the House on Tuesday, ending a months-long standoff with Democrats over funding President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown agenda.
The $70 billion immigration enforcement measure passed 214-212 over the fierce objections of Democrats, who unanimously voted against the package. Rep. Kevin Kiley, I-Calif., an independent who caucuses with Republicans, also joined Democrats in opposing the measure.
Meanwhile, every GOP lawmaker present voted for the Senate-passed legislation, which funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) through fiscal year 2029.
Tuesday’s vote is a major victory for House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who could spare just a handful of defections given Republicans’ fragile majority.
TRUMP ON VERGE OF SECURING $70B ICE FUNDING VICTORY AFTER HOUSE CLEARS HURDLE
The measure now heads to Trump’s desk, where he is expected to sign it into law.
The GOP-authored bill, known as the Secure America Act, provides $38 billion for ICE and a $26 billion infusion for the Border Patrol. It would also create a $5 billion funding pool to be controlled by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Kiley, who recently switched his party affiliation to independent, said he opposed the bill because it lacked reforms to immigration enforcement and bypassed the traditional appropriations process, which requires some buy-in from Democrats.
“The idea that we’re actually going to now weaken one of the few pillars of sanity we have, which is the annual bipartisan appropriations process, and set this precedent that when you don’t reach bipartisan agreement, you can just do an end run around it … that’s hugely problematic to me,” the California lawmaker told reporters.
“The whole reason I became an independent is because I think that extreme partisanship here has completely run amok, and it’s doing real damage to the country,” he added.
Republican leaders argued they were forced to use the partisan budget reconciliation process after Democrats repeatedly blocked Homeland Security funding bills. The legislative tool allowed GOP leadership to steer around Democrats’ opposition and pass the legislation at a simple majority threshold in the upper chamber.
“This is a piece that Democrats have said they don’t want to fund because they want open borders,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said Tuesday. “They have made it crystal clear, the Democrat Party in Washington, that they want to go back to open borders. And we’re not going to do that.”
For months, Democratic lawmakers refused to fund ICE and the Border Patrol unless it was paired with policy reforms. The party’s hardball tactics sparked the longest government shutdown in history, which largely ended after Trump signed a partial DHS bill in April.
Top Democrats initially took a hard turn against new ICE funding beginning in January after two Americans were killed by federal law enforcement officers during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis.
Their message stayed largely the same heading into Tuesday’s vote.
“Republicans are pouring your hard-earned tax dollars into an agency that has brutalized and terrorized communities and even killed American citizens,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Tuesday. “Republican leadership likes to talk a lot about common sense, but where is the common sense in giving this federal agency essentially unlimited funds without a single reform in place?”
Though Republicans stayed largely united in the ICE funding fight, some conservative lawmakers argued the spending measure should be paired with policy reforms codifying some of the president’s executive orders.
Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., were among the GOP lawmakers who withheld their support for the package during a procedural test vote earlier on Tuesday. Johnson promised the conservative group a vote on border security legislation in the coming weeks, prompting holdouts to support the measure’s advancement, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
The budget reconciliation bill’s passage comes after congressional Republicans failed to meet a June 1 deadline set by Trump to send the measure to his desk.
The quick timeline fell apart after a cohort of Republicans in both chambers revolted against Trump’s roughly $2 billion “anti-weaponization fund.” Some GOP lawmakers, including moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., have since proposed legislation that would curtail the president’s authority to establish the fund.
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