Democrats and Republicans have repeatedly tried to add language to the bill that would prohibit Trump from providing settlement funds to political allies, but Republicans have failed.
WASHINGTON — The Senate passed legislation to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agency early Friday, after weeks of delays and fierce opposition to an unrelated $1.776 billion settlement fund that threatened to derail the bill.
Senators voted 52-47 to pass the $70 billion bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol over the next three years, through the end of Trump’s term. The final vote took place around 5 a.m. after Republicans narrowly defeated repeated attempts by Democrats and Republicans to add language to the bill that would permanently ban Trump from providing reconciliation funds to political allies who believe they are being politically persecuted.
Republicans cleared a major hurdle overnight when they defeated an amendment proposed by one of their own members, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, that would have directed settlement money to law enforcement officers injured in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The amendments are a test of party unity, complicating what should have been an easy vote for Republicans who want to keep their focus on immigration enforcement in an election year. Instead, they spent almost the entire day haggling over whether to block the settlement fund, even though Acting Attorney General Todd Branch said earlier this week that the fund would not move forward.
“If we didn’t have to deal with some of the issues surrounding the fund, this would have been done hours ago,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said shortly before midnight.
Thune himself has criticized the judgment fund, which is part of a settlement to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over leaked tax returns, and angered many of his Republican colleagues. But for weeks, he has been urging Republican senators to focus the bill on funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, which Democrats have blocked since the beginning of the year, and to avoid adding new provisions that could complicate its passage in the House.
Still, a group of Republican senators worked around the clock to pass legislation to block the settlement payments. On Wednesday afternoon, just after the Senate voted to begin debate on the immigration bill, Trump raised new doubts about the future of the settlement, when he told reporters that the settlement was “very important” and said “I don’t know” whether it had been terminated or shelved.
“I’ll have to ask a lawyer,” he said.
Senators reject repeated attempts to ban settlement funds
The first vote Thursday morning on Democratic efforts to ban the settlement took place over several hours as three senators, including Cassidy, decided whether to support the deal. Cassidy ultimately voted against it, while two other Republican senators — Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, both up for re-election this year — voted in favor of the motion, and the Democratic motion was narrowly defeated.
The Senate then rejected a second amendment from North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis that would have also banned the creation of a settlement fund but moved the money to a separate anti-fraud fund at the Justice Department. Most Democrats voted against the amendment, dooming it to failure, but more than 10 Republicans supported it.
Tillis said the fund is a political responsibility of the party.
“If Branch says this basically doesn’t work, why not use this moment to codify it?” Tillis said. “Otherwise, every one of our in-cycle members has to deal with this between today and Election Day, and it doesn’t make sense for something that the Department of Justice has said they’re not going to move forward with.”
Cassidy’s proposed amendment to compensate injured police officers was a sharp rebuke as compensation from the Trump Foundation could go to Trump supporters who beat police officers and stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Despite Branch’s comments, Cassidy said the fund remains part of an active settlement and is “absolutely available.”
The Senate rejected several other efforts by Democrats to block or limit the fund, including an amendment to ban payments to defendants who injured law enforcement officers on Jan. 6.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Republicans are now “leaving taxpayers to rely solely on the promise of Donald Trump’s personal fixer. This is not accountability. This is a permission slip.”
Funding for ICE and Border Patrol has been delayed for months
Enactment of the roughly $70 billion bill to fund ICE and the Border Patrol would end the blockade by Democrats, who have called for policy changes after federal agents shot and killed two protesters in January. The bill would fund the agencies for three years until the end of Trump’s term.
Senate Republicans used complex procedural maneuvers to bypass the filibuster and pass the budget legislation without Democratic votes. But the bill took weeks to get to the Senate floor as Republicans overcame various obstacles posed by Trump and the White House, including the eventual cancellation of a $1 billion White House security and Trump ballroom proposal and strong bipartisan opposition to the reconciliation fund.
Democrats say any funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security should impose restrictions on federal immigration authorities, including better identification of federal officials and greater use of judicial warrants.
After federal agents fatally shot Renee Goode and Alex Pretty in Minneapolis, Trump agreed to Democratic demands to separate the homeland security bill from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan talks have made no progress, with funding for the department lapsed in mid-February and a failure to agree on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy.
With Democratic support, Congress finally funded the rest of the Department of Homeland Security in late April, but ICE and the Border Patrol still don’t have regular funding.
Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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