The United States Senate voted 52-47 along party lines earlier this morning to pass a $70 billion reconciliation funding bill for immigration enforcement agencies, bringing weeks of debate to a close.
The fund would fully finance Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for the next three years, restoring funding excluded from the bipartisan bill that ended the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown. The package must still pass the House before heading to President Donald Trump’s desk for final approval.
“It’s a simple bill, Mr. President,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said on the Senate floor. “It will do nothing more than fund Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the next three years.”
At the end of May, the Senate was planning to vote on the fund but was stalled by Trump’s controversial $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization fund."Although Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified earlier this week that the fund was dead, President Trump later told reporters he was uncertain.
During 18 hours of debate, several senators—mostly Democrats—offered amendments to the fund, all of which failed by a 49-50 vote. One amendment sought to eliminate the fund entirely, another would have redirected the money to fraud enforcement, and a third would have barred funding from benefiting anyone who assaulted Capitol Police officers on Jan. 6, 2021.
“This would have been done several hours ago if we weren’t having to deal with some of the issues around the fund,” Senator Thune said just before midnight.
Both Texas’s Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Cornyn (R-TX) voted against the amendments barring the anti-weaponization fund and for the DHS package.
Sen. Cornyn even created a State Border Security Reinforcement Fund under DHS on the same day, which includes a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act providing $13.5 billion to states like Texas that put resources toward border security during Joe Biden’s administration.
“For four years, President Biden’s disastrous open-border policies wreaked havoc on our nation, and no state did more to fill in the gaps to protect and defend the southern border than Texas,” Sen. Cornyn said.
Despite Sen. Cornyn’s support for immigration enforcement-related funding, his support for any anti-weaponization fund does not seem to be as unwavering.
“The way to ensure the Trump retribution fund is more than mostly dead would be for Congress to put a stake through it,” he posted on X just before the Senate debate began.
However, the DHS package still must pass the House, and after several Republican members joined Democrats to pass a War Powers Resolution against Trump’s war in Iran, it remains unclear how members will vote.
