After months of pushing for reforms to immigration enforcement, congressional Democrats are now boxed out of the process as Republicans move to fund those agencies on their own.
Senate Republicans took the first steps this week by passing a budget resolution after an all-night voting series. But the effort has also exposed fractures in the GOP over what should be prioritized in a party-line bill during a campaign year.
The process, known as budget reconciliation, gives an opening to both parties to test their messaging ahead of November’s midterm elections and a chance to draw contrasts amid an ongoing war and a shuttered government agency.
The Republicans’ legislation puts them on a path to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for multiple years, likely to the tune of $70 billion, and without any reforms. That’s on top of the billions of dollars those agencies received through a different party-line bill Republicans passed last summer.
Because they’re likely to secure years of funding for immigration enforcement, it could also end the shutdown of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which hasn’t been funded for more than two months. But the shutdown might not get resolved until Republicans finish reconciliation, with a goal of June 1. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned his department is running out of emergency funds.
Shutdowns have dominated Congress since last fall, and it’s one of the few instances of must-pass legislation where the minority party has leverage. Democrats demanded “meaningful” reforms for two immigration enforcement agencies under DHS in exchange for their support to fund them through the rest of the fiscal year.
Even absent those reforms, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said it was a worthwhile and necessary pursuit to hold accountable what he sees as an agency flouting laws.
“We asked for reforms that we believe would have significantly reined in the lawlessness at DHS. It was the only way we could ever contemplate voting for that budget,” Murphy said from the U.S. Capitol this week. “If they want to ram this budget through to facilitate rampant illegality with Republican-only votes, the rules allow them to do that.”
Some of the reforms sought by Democrats included a requirement for judicial warrants to enter private property; ending roving patrols; ensuring independent investigations; ending raids at sensitive locations like schools, religious institutions and doctors’ offices; and new protocols like banning face coverings, wearing body cameras and displaying proper identification.
A bipartisan group of senators and the White House were engaged in negotiations for weeks, but they largely petered out by late March as Congress left town for a two-week recess. Both parties were in a blame game over the stalled efforts: Republicans charging that Democrats were offering unserious proposals, and Democrats arguing the GOP weren’t in good-faith negotiations.
Murphy said last week it felt like Republicans “have given up” on negotiations, especially as they went full steam ahead on pursuing the budget reconciliation process.
“They pulled the rug out from under our negotiations at the last minute before the break because they want the president to be able to continue to act illegally. I just think we have to accept that they have no interest in reining in ICE,” Murphy said, adding that he sees the courts acting as a buffer to the Trump administration in the face of no action on Capitol Hill. “That’s a long way to say yes, it feels like they have put a nail in the coffin of bipartisan reforms.”
Democrats said they stood by their push for reforms to an agency they said was acting recklessly and led to the killings of two U.S. citizens earlier this year — and that the guardrails they sought were supported by a majority of Americans.
“We have a constitutional responsibility to only fund a government that is acting lawfully,” Murphy said. “This isn’t about politics. This is about our legal constitutional obligation.”
Republicans go it alone
Budget reconciliation is the same vehicle Republicans used last year to pass Trump’s tax and spending bill that he dubbed the “big beautiful bill.” The process allows the majority party to bypass the 60-vote threshold to break a Senate filibuster and pass certain bills without relying on Democrats. Republicans have a majority and can spare a few votes as long as they clear the simple majority needed to pass the bill.
When one party controls all of Congress and the White House, they tend to pursue budget reconciliation to circumvent the minority party and enact their party’s priorities. Republicans did this last year with an extension of Trump’s tax cuts and cuts to spending like Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
When Democrats had a trifecta of power during the Biden administration, they passed along party lines the Inflation Reduction Act and a pandemic-era relief package.
The practice has become more common in a gridlocked Congress. Republicans say it’s a way to avoid future shutdowns, especially as funding for the rest of the agencies runs out at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 — right before the midterm elections.
“To fund major agencies through reconciliation is unprecedented,” said Murphy, who serves as the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee. “That’s breaking the appropriations process. But maybe that’s how things are going to get done here.”
Before moving to final passage of the budget blueprint, the Senate held a six-hour marathon vote series, known as a vote-a-rama, that stretched into the early hours on Thursday. Lawmakers in both parties could offer amendments on a range of issues.
It’s the one part of the reconciliation process where Democrats can force messaging votes on issues they believe will be salient with the upcoming elections, even with the expectation that their amendments won’t pass.
The theme of Democrats’ amendments centered around cost-of-living issues like school meals programs, child care, health care and home electricity bills. Schumer said the contrast between the parties would be “glaring.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., detailed a number of amendments he wanted to see come up at the vote-a-rama, including a bill that would allow more combat-wounded veterans to receive their full military benefits. He also had a list of amendments related to ICE reforms, including a sensitive locations amendment that would extend protections to places like churches, schools and doctors’ offices.
But hours before the vote series began, he said Democrats were “very clear-eyed we’re not going to get most of these amendments.” None of his ultimately came up.
Democrats’ amendments focused almost exclusively on affordability issues, but none of them was adopted. Republicans, meanwhile, had some of their own, including one extending a rule that denies Medicaid payments to abortion providers and another on voter ID that was part of the SAVE America Act. Neither secured enough votes to pass.
The path forward
The House plans to take up the budget resolution next week, where it’s unlikely to gain any votes from Democrats. If it passes, that will allow Republicans to start writing the reconciliation package for DHS funding.
GOP leaders are trying to keep the bill as narrow as possible and focused on funding for immigration enforcement. But rank-and-file Republicans, especially in the House, would like to see more priorities added, especially if this is their last chance at a party-line bill.
“It doesn’t seem like this should be that heavy of a lift, but nothing is easy these days,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Politico when the vote series concluded early Thursday.
Hoping to get his colleagues on board, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said there will be another chance to address other priorities in a third reconciliation package.
“We’re going to move right to reconciliation, what will now be 3.0,” Johnson said, according to Politco. “We’re going to do it as quickly as possible.”
But some House Republicans are skeptical about another opportunity and could try to broaden it with stalled provisions in the SAVE America Act, funding for the war in Iran or additional spending cuts. Changing the budget resolution would slow down the process to get a reconciliation package done.
That’s a prospect Blumenthal mused about a week earlier.
“I would say the whole thing is just a complete mess. It depends on Republicans in the House who are totally confused and chaotic because Trump is their lodestar and vacillates and oscillates between all kinds of stuff,” he said. “So I don’t know where they’re going.”
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
