House to vote on ICE funding, ending months-long impasse

Washington — The House is set to vote Tuesday on Republicans’ $70 billion bill funding immigration enforcement agencies through the rest of President Trump’s term after the Senate approved it early Friday following weeks of roadblocks. 

Barring any last-minute hiccups among House Republicans, passage would bring an end to the months-long stalemate over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. 

The House is scheduled to take a procedural vote on the legislation around 1:30 p.m., with final passage expected after 4:30 p.m. if it clears the earlier vote. On Monday afternoon, the House Rules Committee met to tee it up for floor consideration. 

House GOP leaders had initially expected to hold a vote late last week on passage, but delayed taking up the measure until this week. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said Monday that he expected the legislation to pass, although he acknowledged that he had a very small margin of error and that attendance during primary season “is a real challenge.” 

“We have to fund border enforcement and immigration enforcement, and everybody here knows that, so they’re going to have to put their personal preferences aside to get the job done,” he said. 

But at least one member who caucuses with Republicans, Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California independent, said he plans to vote against the bill. Kiley had “very strong concerns” about the “strictly party-line process” and wanted to see “significant bipartisan reforms to interior immigration enforcement.”

House Republicans have been waiting for weeks for their Senate counterparts to send over the legislation. Both chambers had hoped to have the bill on President Trump’s desk by Memorial Day in order to meet his June 1 deadline, but those plans were impeded by the president’s request for $1 billion related to construction of a massive ballroom at the White House and the announcement of a nearly $1.8 billion Justice Department fund to pay people who claim they were politically persecuted. 

Rare GOP pushback against the president’s priorities forced Senate Republicans to delay votes until after their Memorial Day recess. 

Language for ballroom security funding was ultimately stripped from the legislation and the Justice Department said it would no longer pursue the “anti-weaponization” fund. Though the administration’s assertion about no longer pursuing the fund failed to convince some who were skeptical, a number of amendments to formally bar such payouts were defeated during a marathon session of votes in the Senate that stretched from Thursday morning into the early hours of Friday. 

Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to fund immigration-related agencies. The process allows them to pass some fiscal legislation by a simple majority in the Senate, bypassing the need for any Democratic votes to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Democrats have refused to fund ICE and Border Patrol without reforms.