Congress skips town without passing $72B immigration enforcement bill

By Thérèse Boudreaux
The Center Square

In an epic breakdown of negotiations, Congress is leaving town without voting on Republicans’ roughly $72 billion budget reconciliation bill.

Senate Republicans ultimately deadlocked Thursday over whether to include restrictions on the Department of Justice’s controversial new “anti-weaponization fund” within the party-line bill, which funds federal immigration enforcement agencies for the next three years.

Because both chambers return the first week of June, Republicans will almost certainly miss President Donald Trump’s deadline of June 1 when he wants the legislation on his desk.

The Senate had already delayed a vote on the bill due to its $1 billion earmark for Secret Security to use on White House ballroom security upgrades. Trump had previously said the venue, currently under construction, would be funded only by donor dollars.

Republican leaders eventually decided Wednesday to throw out the provision – much to Trump’s chagrin – due to procedural complications and lack of member support.

Yet some Senate Republicans are still withholding their support unless the bill reins in the unrelated roughly $1.8 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund the DOJ recently announced.

The fund – a politically toxic issue for Republicans – would support individuals making legal claims that the former Biden administration unfairly targeted them for political or ideological reasons.

“Senate Democrats held strong. Senate Republicans are in chaos,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., posted on X. “This is just the beginning – we will keep fighting this bill, filled with Trump vanity projects and billions for his rogue police forces, for as long as it takes.”

Republicans’ unconventional tactic of providing advance annual appropriations via the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process is a response to Democrats shutting down the Department of Homeland Security for 76 days.

Senate Democrats had refused to support any appropriations bill funding ICE and U.S. Border Patrol for the current fiscal year unless it instituted a laundry list of agency reforms, causing Republicans to eventually walk away.

“If this were about making reforms to how ICE and Border Patrol does business, then Democrats would have accepted the robust package of legislative reforms they were offered by the White House or engaged in serious negotiations to tweak the package – but they didn’t,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday.

Responding to Schumer’s accusations that funding immigration enforcement without including affordability-focused provisions is “totally out of touch with what Americans need,” Thune said the comments “obfuscate what is happening here.”

Republicans have been laser-focused on making life easier for hardworking Americans. But remarkably, it is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time,” Thune said. “And we can protect Americans by protecting our borders and continue to pass legislation that will alleviate some of the pressures facing hardworking Americans.”