Republicans took a first step early Thursday morning toward funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term using a novel approach that will allow them to fund the agencies without Democrats’ help.
The strategy is part of a two-pronged plan to end the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history. The Department of Homeland Security has been shuttered for nearly 10 weeks because of a partisan standoff over the administration’s immigration enforcement operations. Democrats demanded that Republicans agree to new accountability measures in exchange for their support for DHS funding, but the two sides failed to reach an agreement after weeks of negotiations.
Instead, Republicans devised a time-consuming approach to funding the department, which President Donald Trump has endorsed.
The Senate voted 50-48 early Thursday to begin work on one part of the plan: A bill to send approximately $70 billion to ICE and Border Patrol without the help of Democrats under budget reconciliation rules. Reconciliation allows the Senate to pass legislation with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes typically needed to overcome a filibuster as long as it complies with obscure budget rules.
Two Republicans voted with Democrats against the measure — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Kentucky).
Reconciliation is often used to push through signature legislation, such as the tax and spending law that Republicans passed last year and President Joe Biden’s 2022 climate and domestic policy law, not for the more commonplace process of funding the government.
Reconciliation is a complicated, multi-step process. The measure that the Senate passed Thursday instructs the Judiciary Committee and the Homeland Security Committee to propose legislation by May 15 with the goal of passing a final bill by June 1, the deadline that Trump has set.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and other Republicans have said that they would prefer to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the traditional appropriations process but that the breakdown in negotiations with Democrats over new restrictions on federal agents gave them no choice but to turn to reconciliation.
“I am sad that we’re having to do this, but you gave us no choice,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), chairman of the Budget Committee, said on the floor before the vote.
The budget resolution would allow Congress to send ICE and Border Patrol up to $140 billion, although Republican leaders expect to spend about half of that, according to a Senate GOP leadership aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. The money is expected to fund ICE and Border Patrol for the rest of Trump’s presidency.
The Senate has already passed the other part of the Republican plan: a bipartisan bill to fund the rest of DHS, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and other agencies.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has endorsed the plan, but his chamber has not voted on it because of some Republican concerns that the bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol could die in the Senate. House Republicans say they’re waiting to ensure the administration’s immigration priorities get funded before voting to fund the rest of the department.
“The sequencing is important. We’ve got to make sure we don’t isolate and make an orphan out of key agencies of the department,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday.
Some House Republicans are demanding assurances that there will be another chance to pass remaining GOP policy priorities before the end of the year if they support a narrowly written ICE and Border Patrol funding bill. Republicans have an extremely slim majority in the House, and a small handful of objectors could derail the plan.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Missouri) wouldn’t rule out demanding additional measures in the immigration funding bill, saying he’s “not confident” there will be another reconciliation bill.
“I think we’re wasting an opportunity,” he said. “This may be the last train that leaves the station.”
The Senate’s approval of the budget resolution Thursday morning is only the first step toward funding ICE and Border Patrol. The House still needs to adopt the budget resolution, then both chambers must pass a reconciliation bill to fund the agencies.
Republicans in Congress sent tens of billions of dollars in additional funding last year to ICE and Customs and Border Protection last year, which has allowed the agencies to keep operating during the shutdown. Trump also signed an executive order this month directing DHS to pay all of its employees, but that money is running out.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends” that the money the department has been using to pay employees’ salaries will soon run out. That’s $10 billion for border security in the Republican tax and spending law last year, according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“That money is dried up, if I continue down this path, the first week of May. My payroll through DHS is just over $1.6 billion every two weeks,” he said. “So the money is going extremely fast, and once that happens, there is no emergency funds after that.”
Democrats have argued that the administration already has enough money to fund ICE and Border Patrol without additional appropriations. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act appropriated nearly $140 billion to ICE and Customs and Border Protection, the agency that houses Border Patrol. Of that money, $63.2 billion remained for ICE and $40 billion remained for CBP at the end of March, according to Senate Budget Committee Democratic staffers.
Democrats demanded new restrictions on federal immigration operations after agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. They included a ban on agents wearing masks and rules to prevent agents from entering private property without judicial warrants. Republicans and Democrats for weeks without reaching a deal.
Senate Democrats have criticized Republicans for taking up legislation that does not include any of those changes. Democrats also forced amendment votes on proposals to make Americans’ lives more affordable during a late-night “vote-a-rama” before the resolution’s passage, with the aim of making Republicans take uncomfortable votes ahead of the midterm elections. None of those amendments were adopted, though some drew a few Republican votes.
“Republicans want to shell out billions of dollars to Donald Trump’s private army without any common-sense restraints or reforms,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) told reporters. “Democrats want to put money in people’s pockets by lowering their costs of electricity and of gas and of housing, of health care, of food. The contrast is glaring.”
Some Senate Republicans have pressed to pass affordability legislation ahead of the midterms, but Republican leaders decided against including anything in the bill except funding for ICE and Border Patrol.
“I’d like to see us come up with one or two issues that’ll help the American people with the cost of living and other things that I know Republicans can agree to,” Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-Louisiana) said on the floor.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said he would like Republicans to take up legislation to cut taxes on health care, suspend the gas tax and expand the Child Tax Credit, among other affordability ideas.
“I just worry what voters will say if they see Congress not doing anything this year that is helpful to them, to their families and to their pocketbooks,” Hawley said.
Some of those proposals could attract Democratic support, allowing Republicans to pass them without relying on the cumbersome reconciliation process. But Hawley said he was not optimistic that the Senate would take up such legislation.
“I don’t detect a great deal of appetite for doing a whole lot of legislating at the moment,” Hawley said.
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