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WASHINGTON — After weeks of setbacks and delays, the Republican-controlled House on Tuesday narrowly passed a roughly $70 billion package to fund ICE and the Border Patrol through the end of President Donald Trump’s term.
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The vote was 214-212, with Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California independent who caucuses with Republicans, joining all Democrats in voting no. The package, dubbed the Secure America Act, cleared the Senate last week and now heads to the president’s desk for his expected signature.
The successful House vote ends months of drama and partisan bickering over immigration enforcement funding. In February, Senate Democrats voted to shut down the Department of Homeland Security after the fatal shootings of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during immigration operations in Minneapolis the previous month.
Some 75 days later, Congress passed a bill to end the DHS shutdown — the longest in U.S. history — and fund much of the sprawling federal agency, including the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration and the Secret Service. But funding for ICE and the Border Patrol was stripped out after Republicans rejected Democratic demands for immigration enforcement reforms, including requiring agents to wear body cameras and to get judicial warrants before entering homes.
Because of that impasse, Trump resorted to using other pots of money to temporarily pay those agents and officers.
The only way Trump and his congressional allies could fund ICE and the Border Patrol was to use the reconciliation process, a fast-track budget procedure that allows Republicans to pass legislation with just 51 votes, bypassing Democrats and the usual 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
Trump threw a last-minute wrench into the process last month by demanding that a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund be inserted into the package. But Republicans in both the House and the Senate revolted against the idea of possible taxpayer-funded payouts to Jan. 6 rioters, and administration officials were forced to scrap the plan. GOP leaders had to punt the reconciliation vote until after the Memorial Day recess due to the upheaval.
On Friday, the Senate voted 52-47 to pass the immigration enforcement funding, and the House followed suit. The package is designed to fund ICE and the Border Patrol for the next three years.
Unlike in the Senate, where Democrats could force votes on amendments as part of the process of bypassing a filibuster, House Republicans were able to keep a tight lid on the process.
“This is good news for everybody except Washington Democrats. They gained absolutely nothing from their reckless crusade to return our country to open borders and unfettered mass migration,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a news conference after Tuesday’s vote. Republicans, he said, “will always work to ensure that these brave men and women have the resources they need to carry out the responsibilities to protect America’s families and communities.”
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said that he believed Democrats were genuinely upset by the Good and Pretti killings but that shutting down agencies was not the right response.
“This is a terrible way to do business, and you know, it just tells me, for Senate Democrats, getting the majority is more important than running the country,” Cole told reporters before the vote. “This is not the appropriate way to express that. And frankly, if people have done something wrong, they need to be investigated and held to account.”
But Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who would become chairman of the Homeland Security Committee if Democrats win back the House this fall, said his party was right to demand changes to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.
“We still stand on those principles, whether our Republican colleagues obviously believe in them or not, which obviously they don’t,” Thompson said in an interview. “The average man or woman on the street says that those things make sense … and Republicans are listening to Donald Trump, and only Donald Trump.”
While the bill’s passage marks the end of the appropriations process for the current fiscal year, there won’t be much time to celebrate. Money for most of the government expires again on Sept. 30, when Congress will have to pass funding or face yet another government shutdown.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the chair of the Budget Committee, praised the House for passing the bill.
“I applaud my House Republican colleagues for their swift passage of the Secure America Act,” he said. “Despite Democrat efforts to shut down ICE and the Border Patrol, Republicans have now fully funded these agencies through President Trump’s entire second term to the tune of nearly $70 billion.”
Scott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News.
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