The US House of Representatives has approved a project to provide nearly $70 billion for US immigration agencies, including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol, for the next three years. The project was approved by a narrow margin of 214-212 and will now pass to President Donald Trump for signature. The project focuses solely on the application of immigration laws, a topic that Republicans have treated as a defining issue between the two main political parties and which they hope will lead them to victory in the mid-term elections this year.
A project to provide nearly $70 billion for US immigration agencies was approved by a narrow margin in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, and will now pass to President Donald Trump for signature, giving a boost to the government's deportation agenda for the remainder of his term.
Republicans used their majority to push the project through, funding two agencies of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the next three years. The project was approved by a vote of 214-212. It is expected that Trump will sign it on Wednesday. The White House says that the project will provide $38 billion to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, $26 billion to the Border Patrol and other $5 billion to cover unexpected costs.
It accelerates the annual routine funding, ensuring a practically uninterrupted flow of money while the Trump government seeks to deport around 1 million people a year. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, needed almost perfect attendance and unity of his caucus to bring the weeks of deliberations to a successful end.
The initiative was hindered by a provision of over $1 billion for the security of the White House, including Trump's new dance hall, and a $1.8 billion fund to compensate its allies who claim to have been investigated and prosecuted unjustly. Those proposals turned out to be politically toxic and were discarded.
Now, the project focuses solely on the application of immigration laws, a topic that Republicans have treated as a defining issue between the two main political parties and which they hope will lead them to victory in the mid-term elections this year.
'It's about time,' Johnson said about the project. 'We have to fund the border security and the application of immigration laws, and it's sad that Republicans have to do it on our own. ' But the Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas called it a 'discretionary fund for the ICE.
' The funding adds to the nearly $140 billion that Congress already granted last year to the ICE and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as part of Trump's tax cuts and spending project. Democrats objected to giving more money to the agencies without significant changes in the way they operate following the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.
For example, Democrats insisted that agents not cover their faces and that they be required to show their identification plates during raids and obtain a judicial order before entering private property. Instead, the funding will arrive almost without conditions.
The leader of the Democratic House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, said that Republicans were not focused on the main priorities of the American people and that they had cut access to Medicaid and nutritional assistance through the previous tax cuts and spending project of Trump.
'Republicans have now come back for more, to give the ICE and Donald Trump's massive deportation machine another blank check of $70 billion, without supervision, without accountability and without rails,' Jeffries said. The leader of the majority of the House of Representatives, Steve Scalise, replied that Democrats did not adequately support the security agencies.
'Don't be mistaken: if they vote yes, they are not only voting to protect the US border, they are voting to fund the police forces,' Scalise said. 'And if they vote no, they are voting to withdraw funds from the police. ' The package is the result of a months-long confrontation in Congress after Democrats refused to fund the DHS following the immigration raids in Minneapolis and other US cities, which led to the longest closure in the agency's history.
Negotiations with the White House had been held to modify the ICE operations, as demanded by Democrats, but those negotiations failed. The Republican Representative Jodey Arrington, Chairman of the Budget Committee, said that the money would provide a 'regular and normal funding' that the ICE and the Border Patrol would obtain through the annual budget process
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