GOP Budget Plan Seeks Tens of Billions for ICE, Border Patrol

Senate Republicans released a budget resolution Tuesday calling for tens of billions in mandatory spending on the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement agencies, a key procedural step toward ending the months-long funding lapse.

Once Republicans in both chambers adopt the document, it will unlock the budget reconciliation process to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term.

The complicated two-step maneuver would allow Republicans to circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, bypassing the need for Democratic votes after the minority party demanded immigration enforcement policy changes in exchange for funding the agencies. The move would take the unusual step of providing annual agency funding through a partisan process that bypasses the appropriations committees.

Senators could take a procedural vote as soon as Tuesday that would kick off a maximum 50 hours of debate ending in a so-called vote-a-rama on amendments, in which members of both parties plan to force votes on proposed changes to the blueprint.

BGOV OnPoint: Republicans Eye Second Reconciliation Push

The resolution instructs the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees to write a bill that would increase the federal deficit by no more than $70 billion each. Republicans are aiming to fund ICE and Border Patrol for the next three and a half years.

Senators are separately pushing the House to clear a bipartisan bill that would give DHS roughly $48 billion in annual funding for non-immigration components such as the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Coast Guard (H.R. 7147).

House leaders said Tuesday that they plan to work on funding immigration enforcement agencies through reconciliation before taking up the bill to fund the rest of the department.

The two-track process between the bipartisan and partisan bills serve to restore funding to DHS, which has been in the throes of the longest partial government shutdown in US history after its base funding expired in February.