House Narrowly Passes Homeland Security Budget, Sending Contentious ICE Funding to Senate Democrats

Senate Democrats next week will have to wrestle with whether to fund the Department of Homeland Security for the coming year, after the House narrowly passed funding for DHS on Thursday afternoon. Several prominent Senate Democrats say that they cannot vote for a DHS budget that does not include significant reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the federal operations in Minnesota. Passing a budget for DHS was expected to be a fairly bipartisan affair until the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent at Minneapolis earlier this month. A funding package for a number of departments was swiftly taken apart to cut out the DHS funding after Senate Democrats — who have the power to block spending bills — said that they wanted to see reforms at ICE before signing off on this year’s budget. “Right now, that department is full of unlawful activity,” Senator Chris Murphy told reporters earlier this month. He currently serves as the top Democrat on the subcommittee that writes the DHS budget every year. “This would obviously be a very inopportune time to give the agency that is acting lawlessly a bunch more money,” Mr. Murphy added. On Thursday, many Democrats on Capitol Hill made it clear that they are sticking by that promise to demand ICE reforms before going along with any funding deal. By a vote of 220 to 207, the House passed the DHS budget on Thursday afternoon, with seven Democrats voting with nearly all Republicans voting yes. One GOP member, Congressman Thomas Massie, voted against the spending legislation. A margin of 13 votes may seem comfortable, but typically, these kinds of department and agency funding bills pass with 350 votes or more. For context, another spending bill to fund other departments passed the House with 341 votes just minutes after the DHS budget was approved. “Kristi Noem and ICE are out of control. Taxpayer dollars are being misused to brutalize U.S. citizens, including the tragic killing of Renee Nicole Good. This extremism must end,” the top three House Democrats — Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, Congresswoman Katherine Clark, and Congressman Pete Aguilar said in a joint statement on Thursday. All three lawmakers opposed the bill when it came to the floor. Even the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, announced that she would vote against the bill, even though she herself was a lead negotiator on the legislation. “ICE believes it can act with impunity, and is behaving accordingly,” Ms. DeLauro said on the House floor. “I have made my own determination, and that determination leads me to a ‘no’ vote.”Democrats in the House and Senate have demanded real statutory changes to how ICE operates in exchange for their votes to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Everything from the use of body cameras to new restrictions on the use of force have been proposed, though Republicans have declined to acquiesce to such demands. The bill now moves to the Senate, where Democrats have the power to block spending legislation. It takes 60 votes to end debate and bring such bills to the floor. As of Friday, it appears that Senate Democrats will go along with Republicans’ spending plan and vote to fund ICE through the end of the fiscal year. The next funding deadline is September 30. The top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Patty Murray — who was a strident supporter of Democrats’ last shutdown strategy — says that shuttering DHS for a number of days or weeks will not ensure that ICE changes its behavior. “There is much more we must do to rein in DHS, which I will continue to press for. But the hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need,” Ms. Murray said in a statement this week. Senator Chris Van Hollen — a liberal darling who may run for president in 2028 or pursue the position of Senate Democratic leader in the future — says he will not vote to pass any ICE funding. Mr. Van Hollen became an early critic of the administration’s immigration enforcement policies when he traveled to El Salvador to meet with his constituent, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been mistakenly sent to his home country’s maximum security prison CECOT, where many migrants have claimed they were tortured. “We cannot just hope for better. No more money for DHS without accountability,” Mr. Van Hollen said last week.

House Narrowly Passes Homeland Security Budget, Sending Contentious ICE Funding to Senate Democrats

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