Senate shelves $70B immigration bill

Senate Republicans left Washington on May 21 without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection after a dispute over Trump-linked spending overwhelmed the package. The immediate flashpoint was a new $1.776 billion Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund tied to a settlement involving President Donald Trump and the IRS, along with other provisions that some Republicans said looked tailored to the president. Republican leaders said they would delay action until after the Memorial Day recess, missing Trump’s own June 1 target for passage. ### Why did a border funding bill get pulled so late? Thursday’s collapse followed a closed-door meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who tried to defend the settlement and the new fund to Republican senators. Instead of easing concerns, the meeting deepened them, according to comments afterward from Senate leaders and lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the White House should have consulted Congress before announcing the settlement and said it made “everything way harder than it should be.” (pbs.org) The bill itself was supposed to carry Republicans’ reconciliation plan for immigration enforcement. Senate Republicans had advanced the framework on April 23 by a 50-48 vote, aiming to steer $70 billion to ICE and Border Patrol over three years while bypassing a Democratic filibuster. Because Republicans hold 53 seats, they could afford only a small number of defections on the final package. (pbs.org) ### What exactly in the package angered Republicans? The $1.776 billion fund drew the most resistance because senators said it could become a vehicle to compensate Trump allies who claimed they were politically targeted. PBS, citing the Associated Press, reported that Republicans were at an impasse over whether to block the fund from the immigration bill altogether. Blanche had also declined earlier to rule out Jan. 6 defendants receiving payments if they applied. (cnbc.com) A separate $1 billion proposal for White House complex security and Trump’s planned ballroom had already been dropped after pushback from Republicans. That left the “anti-weaponization” fund as the larger unresolved problem inside a bill that GOP leaders had hoped to move quickly. ### Who in the GOP broke with the White House? (pbs.org) Mitch McConnell delivered the bluntest criticism on May 21. The former Republican leader said: “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong.” His statement came after Blanche met with Senate Republicans. (pbs.org) Ron Johnson also criticized the timing of the fund’s rollout, calling it a “giant mistake” and, according to reports, a “galactic blunder.” Thune said the broader political atmosphere had also complicated the effort, including Trump’s endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over Senator John Cornyn in Texas’s upcoming primary runoff. (pbs.org) ### Why was this bill so important to Republican leaders? The April budget resolution was central to Republicans’ plan to keep funding ICE and Border Patrol through the end of Trump’s term without Democratic votes. CNBC and Reuters reported that most of the Department of Homeland Security had been in a partial shutdown since February, after Democrats refused to support more immigration-enforcement funding without tighter operating rules for agents. (yahoo.com) The Senate had already passed legislation to fund the rest of DHS, but that measure stalled in the House. That left the immigration package carrying both policy urgency and difficult vote math. The delay means Senate leaders now return in the week of June 1 needing to decide whether to strip out Trump-specific items, rewrite the fund, or risk more defections from their own conference. That is an inference based on the public dispute over the fund and the postponed vote. (pbs.org) (cnbc.com)