Senate Republicans passed their $70 billion immigration enforcement bill Friday, beating back several attempts to rein in the Justice Department’s “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Senators voted 52-47 on the bill after roughly 18 hours of amendment votes. In the end, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the only Republican to vote against the bill — she had previously voted against the budget blueprint for the immigration enforcement plan and had raised concerns that it circumvented the appropriations process.
The House left town Thursday rather than stay and pass it before leaving for the weekend. Now it won’t go to President Donald Trump until early next week — pushing the GOP even further past Trump’s self-imposed June 1 deadline.
Friday’s vote followed weeks of stops and starts as Republicans saw momentum on their party-line package get repeatedly derailed because of Trump’s political priorities. First Republicans needed to contend with the administration’s push to get $1 billion in Secret Service funding, part of which could go toward the White House ballroom project.
Then came the Justice Department’s announcement of a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” critics feared would be used to give payouts to the administration’s allies, including those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In the end, Republicans nixed the ballroom security money from the bill and beat back several attempts to jettison or place guardrails on the fund from Democrats and some of their own members.
“It’s a simple bill,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday in defense of the legislation. “It will do nothing more than fund Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for three years … because Democrats have refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security or immigration law enforcement.”
But Democrats hammered Republicans for not including language that would limit or prohibit the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told House appropriators that the administration wouldn’t go forward with it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Republicans of “taking the great values of America on our 250th year and flushing them down the toilet because you’re afraid of Donald Trump.”
He added, “Are Republicans really going to take Todd Blanche, a known liar, at his word?”
In the end, the marathon vote-a-rama did expose GOP fault lines.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) offered an amendment that would have inserted language to block the construction of Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom unless Congress authorizes the project. It was rejected by a 53-46 vote, short of the required 60-vote threshold, but not before several Republicans lined up in support: Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, as well as Murkowski and fellow Alaskan Dan Sullivan.
Eleven Republicans joined with Tillis in an attempt to advance his amendment that would have redirected the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” toward fraud enforcement at the Justice Department. The amendment fell well short of the 60 votes it would have needed to move forward, since most Democrats opposed it because of how Tillis redirected the funding.
Republicans held the first vote of the day — an effort by Schumer to effectively kill the bill by punting it back to the Judiciary Committee — open for hours as they huddled with their own members, who wanted to get language into the bill to nix the fund.
Cassidy himself spent hours trying to get a vote on an amendment related to the fund at a 50-vote threshold. In the end, he offered — with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) — an amendment that failed to clear a 60-vote hurdle, which would have redirected money to law enforcement officers injured on Jan. 6.
And Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama called out fellow Republicans who voted against advancing an amendment to loop part of the GOP election bill, known as the SAVE America Act, into the bill, saying that “the people of North Carolina, Alaska, Kentucky, and Maine deserve better.”
Republicans ultimately decided to go it alone in funding the immigration enforcement activities within the Department of Homeland Security through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process — after they were unable to get a deal with Democrats linking the money to new guardrails on ICE and Border Patrol after federal agents killed two people in Minneapolis in January.
The bill would provide roughly $38.5 billion for ICE and more than $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection, as well as an additional $5 billion that will be dispersed at the discretion of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Among other amendments rejected during the hourslong voting session was a proposal from Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) that would effectively bar housing official Bill Pulte from serving as acting director of national intelligence by prohibiting a Senate-confirmed leader of a federal agency or department from serving simultaneously in the DNI role.
Collins, Cassidy and Murkowski voted with Democrats on the proposal, which went down 49-49
“This role was too important to be filled by a part-time, unqualified individual,” Warner said.
Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
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