When Republicans muscled President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill through Congress last year, they gave a windfall to the Department of Homeland Security — including for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — with effectively no strings attached.
Republicans allocated a total of $190 billion over four years, including $75 billion for ICE alone, making it the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency. At the time, Democrats warned that the money would supercharge the department without any checks on its operations. But Republicans used a special maneuver to shield the measure from a filibuster and get it to Mr. Trump’s desk on a simple majority vote, leaving Democrats powerless to block it.
Now, staring at a government funding deadline on Friday and in the middle of an aggressive immigration crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of two American citizens, Democrats are trying to exert what limited leverage they have through the annual spending bills that require congressional approval to add at least some restrictions to the blank check the Republican Congress delivered to ICE last year.
Senate Democrats are threatening not to vote for a spending package needed to fund the government past Friday, which would result in a partial shutdown starting on Saturday, unless Republicans agree to add limitations on funding for the Department of Homeland Security to constrain its immigration enforcement operations.
“I will vote no on any legislation that funds ICE until it is reined in and overhauled,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “Senate Democrats are overwhelmingly united on this issue.”
They cannot act alone. Making any changes to the spending measure would require buy-in from Republicans, whose votes would be needed to scale procedural hurdles in the Senate and push a revised bill back through the House.
After the two shootings this month in Minneapolis, there are signs that at least some Republicans have grown uncomfortable with the slush fund that a majority of them approved and are open to discussing new guardrails.
“I don’t want to defund ICE,” said Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, one of a few Republicans in his chamber to vote against the domestic policy measure last year. “But I’m not sure I want to give them billions and billions more without any kind of signs of, there are going to be some rules of the game.”
Because Democratic votes are needed to avert a partial government shutdown, many see the current spending package as their strongest point of leverage for any restrictions on that money. The domestic policy law already made the homeland security funds available. But Congress, through the annual spending bill needed to keep the department operating, dictates how, where and under what circumstances it can spend money.
Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said the funding bills offered Democrats their best chance to address the “absurd levels” of money that Republicans allocated to immigration enforcement last summer.
“They rammed through a bill that loads ICE up with money with absolutely no restrictions on how they use it,” Mr. Murphy said. “And they have to know that comes with consequences. That has ended up helping to feed the crisis that the country is in right now.”
Most of the scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation last year focused on the large tax cuts it provided, the bulk of which went to high earners, and the substantial cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs that paid for them. But the law also gave federal immigration officials a huge injection of money to carry out the expensive mass deportation effort Mr. Trump had promised.
That combination is what gave rise to Mr. Trump’s nickname for the measure. Rather than split the two priorities into separate bills, the president insisted on pushing through “one big, beautiful bill” carrying both, pairing broadly popular tax cuts with a deportation slush fund that might have been less palatable on its own.
Just months into Mr. Trump’s second term, the immigration crackdown appeared to be straining its annual budget. Democrats and Republicans alike expressed concern that the agency was spending so heavily that officials would need to claw back money they had assigned for other purposes in order to fund widespread raids and detentions.
So Republicans turned to their megabill, using it to allocate more than $170 billion over four years for immigration enforcement at the Department of Homeland Security, with another roughly $20 billion for other operations.
Within that pool of money, G.O.P. lawmakers allocated $75 billion to ICE, an injection of cash that supplemented the roughly $8 billion that Congress had provided for the agency in its annual budget. In effect, they handed the agency an additional $20 billion a year.
The money came with no practical limitations. Though in their bill Republicans designated $45 billion to be used for detentions and $30 billion for ICE’s operations, they did not require that the agency report how it was spending the money or keep it from shifting funds around, as would typically have been done in an annual spending bill.
Another $10 billion was given to the homeland security secretary to broadly cover activities meant for “border support.” Roughly $65 billion was allocated to Customs and Border Protection, $47 billion of it for a border wall. Those funds were also free of reporting requirements, an issue raised by lawmakers from across the political spectrum.
“It is Congress’s job to ensure that the historic funding provided to DHS in reconciliation is being properly used and that procedures and protocols are being followed,” Representative David Joyce, a moderate Republican from northeast Ohio, said in a social media post.
The homeland security spending bill that the House passed last week, and that Senate Democrats are trying to change, currently includes $10 billion for ICE, rejecting Mr. Trump’s request for a large increase and keeping its budget roughly flat. It would include $20 million for body cameras for ICE and C.B.P. agents, and it would require the Homeland Security Department to give Congress monthly updates on how it is spending the money that Republicans gave it last year. Democrats tried during negotiations with Republicans to add stronger restrictions, but were rebuffed.
After the shootings in Minnesota, Democrats are demanding that the bill be reopened to add stricter limits, such as requiring judicial warrants for ICE to make arrests and requiring federal agents wear visible identification.
At the same time, some lawmakers have warned that a government shutdown would not necessarily curb ICE’s operations, precisely because of the infusion of money that the agency has already received.
“Not passing the homeland bill will not stop ICE right now,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said on Wednesday. “Why? Because Republicans already gave ICE tens of billions of dollars without a single Democratic vote.”
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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