Senate Republicans unveil $72 billion budget package to fund ICE, CBP

By Thérèse Boudreaux
The Center Square

Republicans are forging ahead with legislation to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and U.S. Border Patrol along party lines.

The two Senate committees tasked with constructing a filibuster-proof budget reconciliation bill both unveiled the text of their proposals late Monday night. Taken together, the bills allocate a grand total of $72 billion for federal immigration enforcement operations over the next three years.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the advance funding will “help provide certainty for federal law enforcement” and prevent the country from being “dragged backwards by Democrats’ radical, anti-law enforcement agenda.”

The package includes over $38 billion for ICE and roughly $26 billion for CBP, of which $3.5 is for investment in border security improvements, located in the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee’s portion.

Republicans also ensured that the Department of Homeland Security as a whole – which houses ICE and CBP – would receive an extra $5 billion, while the Department of Justice would receive $1.5 billion and the Secret Service $1 billion.

The $1 billion for Secret Service is allocated within the Senate Judiciary Committee’s portion of the package and is meant to fund “security adjustments and upgrades” to the East Wing Modernization Project, which the Trump administration is replacing with a ballroom.

The committee added a limitation in the bill, however, specifying that “[n]one of the funds made available… may be used for non-security elements” of the project, referring to the construction of the ballroom itself.

Republicans have argued that the recent shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which took place in the banquet hall of the Washington, D.C. Hilton, proves the security need for a White House venue.

Trump initially pitched the ballroom project as being privately financed through donations and not tax dollars.

Committee markups of the bills are expected in May, followed by floor debate before final votes. President Donald Trump wants the budget reconciliation package on his desk by June 1.

Using the budget reconciliation process to provide annual appropriations for government agencies is unprecedented. But congressional Republicans felt it their only option after Senate Democrats blockaded immigration enforcement funding, causing a 76-day shutdown of DHS.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the use of reconciliation “was not my preferred path. Yet, this is the reality before us.”

“I thoroughly regret the erosion of the appropriations process Senate Democrats have instigated, and the consequences that were paid by everyday Americans,” Cole added. “It’s not a standard I accept.”