GOP’s ICE funding gambit squeezes Republican agenda

Republicans’ plan to use the special budget reconciliation process to fund immigration enforcement without help from Democrats will complicate their hopes of using one of their few remaining shots at a GOP-only bill on priorities voting reform, Pentagon funding due to the Iran war, and cuts aimed at cracking down on fraud in federal programs. 

President Trump set a June 1 deadline for a reconciliation bill that funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol as part of a two-step plan to end the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown, giving up on coming to a compromise with Democrats demanding reforms as a condition of funding immigration enforcement.

But with Republican leaders hoping to keep that bill as narrow as possible to meet the deadline, there is a growing consensus that those who had been advocating for a follow up to last year’s “big, beautiful bill” will actually need a third measure to achieve their priorities — a task that becomes exponentially more difficult the closer to election season Republicans get. 

“Speed is the most important thing. Speed so that we have ICE and CBP fully funded,” said Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus. “So if you can do other things and be fast, I think that’s great. There’s lot of things we would like to do, but given that we’ve already established there will be a third reconciliation bill, whether it’s in 2.0 or 3.0, we’ll still get it done.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee that will be key in crafting any reconciliation package, said at a Thursday event in South Carolina that he was now planning two more reconciliation bills — one done “quick” to address ICE and border funding, plus one in the fall to target fraud and incorporate voter reforms that he described as a “down payment on the SAVE Act.”

Graham had initially been planning for a single reconciliation bill to include a boost to Pentagon funding due to the Iran war alongside ICE funding and voting reforms. If he is hoping to add the defense funding to a bill focused on ICE, that is sure to be met with demands from GOP fiscal hawks to offset that spending, further complicating the path to reopening DHS. 

The Pentagon has reportedly asked the White House to ask Congress for a $200 billion supplemental address, and the White House budget on Friday proposed that Congress pass around $350 billion in defense spending through the reconciliation process to increase access to “critical munitions” and further expand the “defense industrial base.”

Republicans used budget reconciliation — a process that allows Republicans to circumvent a filibuster in the Senate as long as the legislation that’s being considered meets certain budgetary requirements — for the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) of tax cuts and Trump’s spending priorities last year.

Because reconciliation can be used once per fiscal year, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has long pitched taking one or two more bites at that apple before the end of this Congress.

But even before the DHS funding fight, some Republicans were skeptical that they could get agreement to pass another bill of GOP priorities, given competing demands from fiscal hawks for spending cuts and from moderates to not pursue unpopular cuts in a midterm election year. Republicans will be able to afford to lose no more than one or two members on any party line vote in the House.

House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), whose panel will also be deeply involved in any reconciliation process, told reporters last month during a GOP retreat in Doral, Fla., that he doesn’t see Republicans being able to move a reconciliation package past this spring.

“The closer we get to November, the more sensitive some of our members will be,” he noted.

With the risk of a reconciliation bill falling apart later in the year, there will be pressure from Republicans and other outside groups to pack as much as they can into a bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol.

Any additional priority added to an ICE reconciliation bill, though, threatens to further delay reopening the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), because it will involve more committees, more hearings and more negotiations. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) acknowledged those difficulties on Thursday, noting that he wants to keep the second bill as “narrow” as possible.

“The other things implicate other committees and create jurisdictional challenges and germane issues on the floor,” Thune told reporters. “Our theory of the case behind all this was to keep that thing as narrow and focused as possible, and that maximizes, I think, the speed at which we can do it and the support for it.”

Plus, many House Republicans are demanding to see passage of a reconciliation bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol before they agree to pass a bipartisan Senate bill to fund the rest of DHS — a bill that Johnson had initially rejected as a “joke” before reverting to support it alongside Trump and Thune days later.

“There’s no desire to pass the Senate open borders bill and then hope that we get a reconciliation bill that would close the border. They’ve got to come together. And we obviously already have one. We have the Senate open borders bill. Now, they’ve got to send over the one that will keep the border closed,” Fine said.

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