Senate Passes $70 Billion Immigration Enforcement Bill After 18-Hour Session

The Senate passed a $70 billion bill early Friday to fund immigration enforcement agencies through the end of President Trump’s term, ending an 18-hour session and a months-long Democratic blockade of money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, PBS NewsHour and NPR reported. The bill now goes to the House.

Senators voted along party lines, with only one Republican opposing the package, NPR said. Republicans moved to fund the agencies on their own, without Democratic votes, after the effort stalled for months. PBS reported that the package had been held up after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens who were protesting immigration crackdowns in Minnesota, and that it stalled again when the administration proposed nearly $2 billion for its “anti-weaponization” fund, which PBS said could compensate January 6 rioters; NPR put the fund at nearly $1.8 billion. NPR’s Barbara Sprunt said the acting attorney general had said the fund would not move forward, but Trump then told reporters he did not know whether it was scrapped.

Democrats and some Republicans still pressed amendments to bar the fund, and they failed. NPR said Republicans voted down many amendments that would displease the president, and that one amendment drew only three Republican votes, leaving it short of passing. Sprunt said other Republican-written amendments, crafted to appeal to the full conference, also fell short, and that the tension between Congress and the White House does not seem likely to stop soon. The final package dropped $1 billion that had been requested for White House security upgrades and for Trump’s proposed ballroom, PBS reported.

The SAVE America Act, a Republican election overhaul that Trump called a top priority, also failed on Thursday as an amendment to the package, NPR reported. The bill would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to cast a ballot. Trump said in his State of the Union address that Congress should “unite and enact this common-sense, country-saving legislation right now.” NPR reported that Majority Leader John Thune made clear there was not enough appetite among Republicans to abolish the filibuster to pass it. “It’s about the votes. It’s about the math,” he told reporters. NPR noted that experts say noncitizens have never been shown to vote at anything but microscopic numbers.

Republicans framed the immigration money as a question of border security. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the choice is “a secure border versus a broken border,” and said on the Senate floor, as PBS reported, that Democrats “will find out in November.”

The same overnight session left other business unfinished. PBS reported that the Senate failed to renew a surveillance authority, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with one week left before it expires, because of senators’ concerns about Bill Pulte, Trump’s choice to oversee the intelligence agencies, whom critics note is a housing regulator without a national security background. Asked about Pulte cutting staff at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Trump said he would not mind, PBS reported.