Senate Passes $70B Border Enforcement Bill via Reconciliation

The Senate passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill early Friday morning after an 18-hour vote-a-rama that stretched past sunrise. The measure funds Border Patrol and ICE operations through the remainder of President Trump's term and now heads to the House. The bill provides multi-year funding for core immigration enforcement priorities.

President Trump has already signed legislation reopening the remainder of DHS funding. Republicans shifted to the reconciliation process for the border security package after earlier negotiations with Democrats on full Department of Homeland Security appropriations collapsed earlier this year. Majority Leader John Thune said the session ran long in part because of repeated attempts by Sen.

Bill Cassidy to add language addressing a Trump settlement fund that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had stated two days earlier was no longer active. Cassidy consulted the parliamentarian throughout Thursday on versions of a provision that would block the fund.

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.

Cassidy could not secure a provision that would pass with a simple majority, and the Senate approved the bill without it. An amendment authored by Sen. Thom Tillis that sought to block the settlement fund and redirect the money to assist the DOJ’s fraud task force failed.

A dozen Republicans voted for the Tillis amendment, but it did not secure the necessary Democratic support. Sen. Susan Collins repeatedly voted to kill the settlement 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.

Republicans had planned to fund most Department of Homeland Security operations through regular appropriations earlier this year. The Senate was on the verge of passing funding for all of DHS back in January before those negotiations collapsed. The outcome achieved Friday morning was the result of a two-step approach that funds Border Patrol and ICE operations separately through reconciliation.