GoKawiilis a policy reporter at The Verge covering surveillance, the Department of Homeland Security, and the tech-right.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Congress narrowly voted to fund President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, giving the Department of Homeland Security $70 billion over the next three years.
The house voted 214 to 212 in favor of the reconciliation bill Tuesday, following the Senate’s 52-47 vote last Friday morning. The vote fell largely along party lines. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was the only Senate Republican to vote against it. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), initially voted against the bill — meaning it would have failed — but changed his vote after huddling with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and and Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, according to The Hill. No Democrats voted in favor of the funding bill, which was done through a budget reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster.
Democrats tried to use the legislation to block Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund,” which would compensate people who claim they were victimized by the federal government — and which critics say is a slush fund for Trump’s allies. (The Department of Justice said it would stop work on the fund after a federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked it from making any payouts, but Trump has continued to express interest in the idea.) They also tried to get Republicans to agree to a number of reforms for ICE and Customs and Border Protection in the wake of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Neither appear in the final bill.
In a speech on the House floor ahead of the Tuesday vote, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) criticized Republicans for using the budget reconciliation process to avoid negotiating with Democrats, and emphasized ICE’s lack of popularity with the American people.
“At its core, this Republican reconciliation budget bill is a statement about priorities, and the priorities represented in this budget bill could not be more out of step with the needs and values of the American people,” Scanlon said.
Scanlon noted that DHS has yet to spend $100 billion of the nearly $200 billion it received under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. She added that Trump has not only expanded ICE’s reach by increasingly going after legal immigrants but also weaponized DHS against its critics. The bill, she said, will “supercharge” Trump’s abuses.
After the House markup last Friday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, noted that the bill not only lacks sufficient reforms but also cuts funding for cybersecurity and TSA, whose workers went weeks without pay during the DHS shutdown.
The funding bill comes at a time of deep unpopularity for ICE. One recent poll found that just 33 percent of voters approve of how the agency is doing its job.
... continue reading