WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, Senate Republicans unveiled their 72-billion dollar spending bill for ICE and Border Protection (CBP). These agencies, which Democrats have tried to enact reforms for their immigration and enforcement tactics, would be funded for the next three years. The measure also includes a billion dollars for the President’s ballroom project.
For months, Democrats have held up funding for these two DHS agencies after they advocated for reforms for ICE and CBP following intense pushback on the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics but under the reconciliation process, which is a special budget procedure, Republicans could move forward with funding without Democratic support.
“You can’t put anything in the bill that’s not related to revenues or expenditures so you can’t put something in there that’s on voting rights because that’s not related to expenditures or revenues,” explained Dr. Todd Belt, professor and director of George Washington University’s Political Management program.
According to documents, this would give ICE 38 billion and CBP 26 billion for the next three years. Republicans said the funding would ensure stability for federal law enforcement after a historically long DHS shutdown. Democrats are calling this package “harmful” because it doesn’t come with a single reform they were seeking.
“The Democrats lost in their fight to get specific reforms they wanted for ICE, things like the wearing of masks and body cameras and all of the things they were asking for, they did not get in this package,” said Dr. Belt. “So, they’re going to have to go home to their voters and explain to them we didn’t get what we wanted and so you need to put us back in power so we can.”
Also in this text: a billion dollars for security purposes for the President’s White House ballroom project.
“This may be controversial,” said Dr. Belt. “There are a number of Republicans who are not comfortable with this figure in this bill especially because Donald Trump said this would all be privately funded.”
