The U.S. Senate voted along party lines early Friday to approve $70 billion in funding for ICE and the Border Patrol, after Republicans were able to overcome internal dissension over the unrelated issue of the $1.8 billion Trump slush fund.
The 52-47 Senate vote approving the ICE and Border Patrol money had just one GOP defector – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
The matter moves to the U.S. House next week, where it will likely have to pass by a similar, narrow, party-line margin.
The Senate vote came after a marathon 18-hour debate that included several votes on amendments from Democrats that attempted to tie efforts to outright prohibit federal money going to the Trump slush fund to the funding bill.
One amendment, from Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who was defeated in a GOP primary last month after butting heads with Donald Trump, would have redirected payments from the settlement to members of the Capitol Police who were injured in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
“This would have been done several hours ago if we weren’t having to deal with some of the issues around the fund,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said before midnight Thursday, which was still hours before the 5 a.m. Friday vote that advanced the immigration enforcement funding.
Thune, who has himself been critical of the slush fund, was still pushing for a clean immigration enforcement funding bill – i.e., without riders related to the fund – to send to the U.S. House.
Thune sold his caucus on the idea floated by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, that the fund is “inoperable,” which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said is little more than “leaving taxpayers to rely on nothing more than a promise from Donald Trump’s personal fixer. That is not accountability. That is a permission slip.”
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Chris Graham
