Senate Republicans plan partisan bill to fund Trump immigration enforcement through presidency

Senate Republicans were preparing a partisan push to finance Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement machine through the end of his presidency, using a fast-track budget process that would let them bypass Democrats if they held their votes together. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the full chamber could begin work as early as next week, with the immediate target being Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol.

The scale is large enough to reshape the federal immigration apparatus for years. Three years of spending based on recent base funding could add up to $50 billion or more, on top of the more than $100 billion Republicans already secured last July outside the regular appropriations process. ICE alone received $75 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, far above its usual annual budget of roughly $10 billion, making it the highest-funded federal law-enforcement agency. The 2025 Republican-led law also set aside roughly $170 billion in total for immigration enforcement and border security.

Thune has tried to cast the coming legislation as an “anorexic” package focused narrowly on ICE and Border Patrol, a signal that Republicans want to keep the bill tight enough to move before the Senate leaves for a week-long recess on May 1. The next step was expected to be a budget resolution directing the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to draft the measure. Trump has set a June 1 deadline for Congress to send him the bill.

But the fight is already pulling in broader conservative demands. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana has pushed to attach the SAVE America Act, a voting restrictions measure Trump backs. Under the proposal, voters would have to show documentary proof of citizenship to register, and states would have to turn over unredacted voter rolls. Alex Padilla and Chuck Schumer have said the bill would harm millions of eligible voters, while Human Rights Watch warned it could fall hardest on women who changed their names after marriage, trans people, low-income voters and rural residents who may not have easy access to passports or birth certificates.

The internal pressure is not just about elections. Several Senate Republicans have also floated adding military spending and other priorities, while the House has been reluctant to advance the bipartisan Homeland Security funding bill until it sees progress on the separate GOP-only enforcement package. Democrats, for their part, had sought to tie the broader DHS standoff to reforms requiring judicial warrants for home entries and banning masks on immigration officers, but Republicans have not accepted those conditions.

If Republicans keep the package narrow, it would amount to a direct attempt to lock in Trump-era enforcement through January 2029 with minimal Democratic support. If they widen it, the bill could become another Capitol Hill fight over how far the party wants to go in expanding detention, deportations and border enforcement power.