Senate backs – The US Senate voted early Friday to approve $70 billion in additional immigration-enforcement funding requested by President Donald Trump, a step Republicans took after Democrats resisted. The bill now heads to the House, while lawmakers fought through hours o
The vote came early Friday, and by nightfall the fight wasn’t really about deportations—it was about what lawmakers were willing to attach to them.
A majority of the U.S. Senate voted to approve President Donald Trump’s request for $70 billion in additional funds for immigration enforcement. with Republicans moving ahead despite Democratic opposition. The Senate vote was still continuing at the time of the report. but once it finishes. the measure will be sent to the House of Representatives for final approval. House Republican leaders said the House is not expected to take up the measure before next week.
Much of Thursday’s long debate had been overshadowed by attempts to insert language that would reach beyond immigration. Democrats and some Republicans pushed proposals aimed at restricting how money could be used—prohibiting federal funds and even private donations for building what critics called a lavish 90. 000 square-foot ballroom on White House grounds that Trump wants.
Senators also wrestled with provisions that would make it illegal for federal dollars to be used for an “anti-weaponization” fund designed to compensate Trump political allies for allegations that the government mistreated them. Those amendments failed.
The new funding is set to help pay for Trump’s controversial migrant deportation crackdown over the next three years. It would also augment about $100 billion in unspent Department of Homeland Security law enforcement money that Republicans enacted last year.
Lawmakers began voting on amendments to the immigration bill in a “vote-a-rama” session early Thursday. culminating in the vote on the underlying measure in the early hours of Friday. The sequence laid bare how quickly procedural battles could consume the substantive one—especially after Democrats targeted the separate fund at the heart of their complaints.
In a move that brought the session to a largely procedural halt for hours. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer tried to kill the “anti-weaponization” fund. which Democrats call a “slush fund” for Trump’s allies. Schumer delivered the argument on the Senate floor. saying. in a speech. that it was “heinous and it won’t die until we permanently ban it by law.” His motion failed in a 50-49 vote. Republicans Susan Collins voted for the effort, and she was later joined by fellow Republicans Jon Husted and Dan Sullivan.
The episode exposed internal turmoil among rank-and-file Senate Republicans. Many of them were looking toward reelection in November with competitive races, and with Trump’s approval rating down even among Republicans. Collins, Husted, and Sullivan all face electoral tests in that cycle.
The “anti-weaponization” fund has been a moving target. Critics say it would allow Trump to use taxpayer dollars to compensate his political allies. The White House and Justice Department have already put the fund on hold. Still, on Wednesday, Trump declined to say whether the fund had actually been terminated, telling reporters, “I love it. I think it’s so important.”.
Senate Republicans who wanted to avoid political blowback pushed for guardrails. Republican Senator Thom Tillis said he would not support passage of the funding bill without a Republican amendment vote to codify acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s congressional testimony that the administration was abandoning the fund. Tillis argued that not doing so would place a burden on congressional Republicans running in November who fear a voter backlash to the fund.
Tillis’s resistance fit into a broader set of arguments about where money should go. Nearly all of the bill’s funding would go to the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agencies. which are carrying out the Trump administration’s vigorous deportations throughout the United States.
After Schumer’s push failed, Tillis offered his own amendment to reallocate the Trump fund’s resources to fraud-enforcement operations. That effort also failed, losing 84-15 while attracting support from 12 Republicans.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy added his voice to the attempt to end the fund. Cassidy proposed an amendment to end it. and he joined Democratic Senator Cory Booker in a friend-of-the-court brief urging U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to maintain the block on Trump’s fund she imposed last week. Booker and Cassidy argued the fund “presents an immediate and dire threat to our constitutional order and the authority of Congress.” Cassidy’s stance was sharpened by the politics around it: he lost his primary last month to two Trump-aligned challengers in Louisiana.
The broader dispute over funding and conditions came as multiple recent actions by Trump drew criticism from some Republicans. Those included seeking $1 billion in taxpayer funding for a White House ballroom and security upgrades tied to Trump’s decision to nominate Todd Blanche as attorney general and to name political ally Bill Pulte as U.S. intelligence chief.
Editing by Deepa Babington, Michael Learmonth, Cynthia Osterman, William Mallard and Alex Richardson.
U.S. Senate ICE Border Patrol $70 billion immigration enforcement Trump deportation crackdown DHS law enforcement funds anti-weaponization fund Chuck Schumer Susan Collins Todd Blanche Thom Tillis Bill Cassidy Cory Booker Leonie Brinkema