Senate Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a budget resolution meant to set the stage for a roughly $70 billion package of funding for immigration enforcement agencies through President Trump’s term, the first step in a two-pronged GOP plan to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. The Senate then voted 52-46 along party lines to open debate on the budget blueprint.
As they look to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection without help from Democrats, Republicans are using the same complex budget reconciliation process they used to pass their One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. Democrats have blocked new funding for those agencies for months as they demanded reforms to the Trump administration’s immigration policies following the fatal shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis.
The Senate last month passed bipartisan legislation by voice vote to fund all of DHS except for the two contentious immigration agencies, but House Republicans have refused to take up that measure until new funding is secured for ICE and border patrol.
“The sequencing is important. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t isolate and, as I say, ‘orphan’ key agencies of the department,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said, adding that some in his party are concerned that addressing the rest of DHS first could leave ICE and CBP without new funding.
The new 58-page Republican plan, released by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, instructs Senate and House committees to draft legislation providing funding for ICE and CBP. Technically, the resolution allows for up to $140 billion in new funding, but GOP leaders are aiming to keep the total cost of the bill at around half that level. The committees have until May 15 to deliver the legislation, and President Trump has set a June 1 deadline for the bill to reach his desk.
“Republicans are doing something that must be done quickly, and that our Democrat colleagues are trying to prevent us from doing. That something is simple: fully fund Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great threat to the United States,” Graham said in a statement. “With this budget resolution, we are moving forward – not backward – on rational immigration policies that secure our border.”
Democrats slammed the Republican measure.
“Instead of doing literally anything to lower costs, Republicans are spending their time working hard to cut another massive blank check for ICE and Border Patrol—without any reforms, or even basic guardrails,” said Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “Families want relief from sky-high prices, not more of their tax dollars thrown at a rogue agency that doesn’t respect their rights. Republicans are moving heaven and earth to cut yet another blank check for ICE, but they won’t put a cent toward making health care or housing more affordable.”
What’s next: The Senate is heading for a vote-a-rama, in which an unlimited number of amendments may be considered. While Republican leaders are pushing to keep the reconciliation bill narrowly focused, others in the GOP want to include other elements of their agenda in the legislation, warning that this might be their last chance to push through certain priorities.
The process is expected to take time — and could leave DHS workers without paychecks again. Under executive orders from the president, the Trump administration has used other funding to pay DHS workers while Congress fights over funding. But Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned that those other funding options will soon run out and his department won’t be able to cover employee salaries the first week of May. DHS has now been partially shut down for 66 days.