Senate holds marathon vote on GOP immigration funding bill

A $70 billion immigration package moved through the Senate on Thursday as Republicans tried to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of President Donald Trump’s term without any Democratic votes. The reconciliation bill, which can pass with a simple majority instead of the usual 60-vote threshold, had already cleared a party-line procedural vote on Wednesday after the chamber adopted the underlying budget blueprint in April by 50-48.

The vote-a-rama quickly turned into a test of whether Senate Republicans could keep their immigration money intact while containing the backlash over Trump’s separate $1.776 billion Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund. Critics have called the money a slush fund for people claiming government persecution, and Senate Democratic leaders used the floor fight to force Republicans to take votes on whether that language should stay in the bill. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers earlier this week that the Justice Department was “not moving forward with the fund. Period,” but Democrats still pressed for a formal ban in law.

Their amendment to permanently block the DOJ fund failed 49-50. Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska broke with most Republicans to support the Democratic effort, while Bill Cassidy of Louisiana ultimately voted no after delaying for hours amid negotiations. Another proposal from Thom Tillis of North Carolina, which would have redirected the DOJ money to fraud enforcement, failed 15-84, underscoring how little appetite there was for salvaging the fund even as Republicans resisted a permanent prohibition.

The floor fight revealed the strategic split inside the GOP. Some senators argued Blanche’s testimony was enough and wanted to preserve room for the administration to maneuver later; others insisted the chamber should write the restriction into law. That tension helped derail Senate Republican efforts to move the ICE bill before the Memorial Day recess and pushed the process past Trump’s June 1 deadline for final passage.

For Republicans, the immigration package remains the main prize: a fast-track vehicle to lock in major new funding for ICE and Border Patrol through the end of Trump’s term. For Democrats, the fight over the DOJ fund exposed the price of moving immigration policy through reconciliation rather than bipartisan negotiation, where one disputed line item can dominate the bill’s political meaning and slow the rest of the agenda to a crawl.