Senate Republicans pushed through a $70 billion immigration enforcement bill in the early hours of June 5, advancing money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol while leaving Sen. Lisa Murkowski as the lone Republican vote against it.
The vote came as Republicans were also moving on other spending priorities, including a House appropriations bill for the 2027 fiscal year with billions of dollars in cuts to the Department of Education. For readers searching the House ICE Border Patrol bill now, the answer is that the Senate moved first, and it did so with a large new enforcement package that Democrats say was paired with refusal to help on housing, food, health care, gasoline and energy costs.
Democrats tried to change the bill twice with amendments aimed at affordable housing, but Republicans rejected both. That clash framed the argument from Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who said Republicans could not spare “a single penny” to help Americans cope with rising prices, yet somehow found another $70 billion for Trump’s agencies even though ICE and Border Patrol already had a hundred billion dollars in cash on hand.
The spending fight also came against a broader backdrop of Republican resistance to Democratic priorities and willingness to move money favored by President Donald Trump. Republicans failed to ban Trump’s $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, and they also did not block him from building a White House ballroom, underscoring how much leverage he still has over the party’s spending agenda.
What remains unanswered is whether the House will take up the Senate-backed immigration funding measure in its current form. The same day the Senate began voting, House Republicans were unveiling their own blueprint for the next budget year, signaling that the fight over federal spending is far from over and that the money now moving toward ICE and Border Patrol may be only one part of a much larger deal.
