House Republicans on Tuesday will seek to pass a $70bn bill to fund the agencies leading Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants through the duration of his term, ending a months-long standoff with Democrats.
The Secure America Act, which passed the Senate last week, allocates $38bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), $26bn to Customs and Border Protection and $5bn more to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
It is expected to pass the House of Representatives along party lines, and end a blockade of funding for the agencies that Democrats announced in January after federal agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis amid a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Passing the measure will nonetheless be a tough haul for the speaker, Mike Johnson, who will need all 218 of his Republican-aligned lawmakers in attendance to vote the bill through the lower chamber against what is expected to be unanimous opposition from Democrats.
“House Democrats will be a hard no on the reckless Republican budget reconciliation bill this week,” Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, said on Monday.
There may nonetheless be surprises awaiting the bill as House lawmakers begin debating it on Tuesday afternoon. Congressional Republicans remain concerned by Trump’s plan for a nearly $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund that would pay out his allies.
The acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, told a House committee last week that the proposal was dead, but the president refused to rule out its creation in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
As the bill was being considered by the Senate last week, a small group of Republicans sought to find bipartisan compromise on an amendment that would bar the fund, without success.
The legislation was also delayed by uproar over an attempt to include $1bn for security improvements related to the ballroom Trump is building at the White House. Senate Republicans eventually agreed to remove those funds, after the chamber’s parliamentarian ruled it could not be included if the measure was to pass using the budget reconciliation procedure to circumvent the Democratic filibuster.
