House passes nearly $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill

A narrow 214-212 House vote sent nearly $70 billion in immigration enforcement money to President Donald Trump, locking in a major expansion of border and deportation funding for the rest of his term. The bill now heads to Trump for his signature after the Senate approved it earlier, ending a four-month fight that turned immigration enforcement into one of the sharpest spending battles in Washington.

The package is designed to keep U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection financed through 2029, the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Reporting on the measure broke the total into about $38.2 billion for ICE, $26 billion for CBP, and a $5 billion fund controlled by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, along with smaller Justice Department and Secret Service items in some accounts. That structure makes the bill more than a one-year spending patch: it sets enforcement priorities deep into the next election cycle and beyond.

Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to move the legislation, an unusual route that let them sidestep a standard annual appropriations fight and avoid the kind of Democratic blocking tactics that have slowed immigration bills before. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune helped steer the measure through chambers where Democrats opposed it almost uniformly. The vote also reflected the durable grip of Trump’s immigration agenda inside the GOP, even as the margin showed how little room there is for defections in a closely divided House.

The funding fight comes after a 76-day partial shutdown of parts of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year, which ended in April when Trump signed a separate bipartisan bill. That measure kept 20 of DHS’s 22 agencies operating through September 30, but it left out ICE and part of CBP, the agencies at the center of the crackdown. The new package fills that gap and goes much further, giving the administration a long runway to expand arrests, detention, removals and border operations without returning to Congress for the same money each year.

Democrats opposed the bill in both chambers, arguing that the $70 billion package handed the administration too much authority with too few guardrails. The American Civil Liberties Union said the Senate version would add $70 billion in taxpayer funds for ICE and Border Patrol without meaningful reforms to curb violent or abusive tactics by federal agents. With the funding fight now decided, the next battles are likely to move to implementation, oversight and the legal challenges that usually follow a sweeping immigration crackdown.