Senate Passes $70 Billion Bill Funding Border Patrol and ICE Operations

The Senate passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill early Friday morning after an 18-hour vote session that stretched past sunrise. The measure funds Border Patrol and ICE operations through the remainder of President Trump's term and now moves to the House, which is scheduled to consider it next week.

Majority Leader John Thune said the session ran long because of efforts to address an anti-weaponization fund the Justice Department had announced weeks earlier.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated two days before the vote that the fund was no longer active. Sen. Bill Cassidy consulted the parliamentarian throughout Thursday in an attempt to add language blocking the fund.

Cassidy could not secure a provision that would pass with a simple majority, and the Senate approved the bill without it. Thune said the fund issue delayed the vote by several hours. Republicans had planned to fund most Department of Homeland Security operations through regular appropriations earlier this year.

After negotiations with Democrats collapsed, the Senate shifted to a two-step approach that funds Border Patrol and ICE operations separately through reconciliation. President Trump has already signed legislation reopening the remainder of DHS funding. By hour 13 of Thursday’s Senate vote-a-rama, Majority Leader John Thune was growing visibly frustrated.

Sen. Bill Cassidy had spent the day consulting with the parliamentarian on a way to block the anti-weaponization fund and was busy shuttling to and from the Senate floor to inquire about new versions of legislative text. Thune told the Washington Examiner shortly before midnight that the bill would have been done several hours ago if they weren’t having to deal with issues around the fund which doesn’t exist.

Thune said Sen. Bill Cassidy had redrafted the provision many times in the last 13 hours. Cassidy admitted defeat in the early hours of Friday morning after being unable to find a solution that would allow his provision to be adopted by a simple majority vote.

Sen. Susan Collins repeatedly voted to kill the anti-weaponization fund during the vote-a-rama and said there certainly have been mixed signals on some of these issues with the acting attorney general and that the White House’s position has been rather confusing. An amendment authored by Sen.

Thom Tillis blocked the anti-weaponization fund and redirected the money to assist the DOJ’s fraud task force. A dozen Republicans voted for the Thom Tillis amendment, but it failed without Democratic support. Republicans broke with Trump on several Democrat-led amendments but none of them passed.

The Senate was on the verge of passing funding for all of DHS back in January before negotiations collapsed. The outcome Thune achieved on Friday morning was hardly Plan A for Republicans.