Democrats spent months trying to choke off the money that keeps ICE agents on the street and Border Patrol on the line.
They failed. Every single one of them.
And now the Secure America Act is sitting on Donald Trump’s desk, and there is not a thing the Left can do about it.
What Just Passed and What It Means
Republicans’ sweeping immigration enforcement and border security package cleared the House, ending a months-long standoff with Democrats over funding President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown agenda. The $70 billion measure passed 214-212 over the fierce objections of Democrats, who unanimously voted against the package.
Every GOP lawmaker present voted for the Senate-passed legislation, which funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through fiscal year 2029. That’s not one year. That’s not two. That’s the rest of Trump’s presidency, locked in, funded, and untouchable.
The GOP-authored bill, known as the Secure America Act, provides $38 billion for ICE and a $26 billion infusion for the Border Patrol. The White House says the bill will also provide another $5 billion to cover unforeseen costs, and it frontloads routine annual funding, ensuring a virtually uninterrupted flow of money as the Trump administration seeks to deport some 1 million people per year.
Speaker Mike Johnson put it plainly after the vote: “What we’ve done now by funding every three years is we’ve taken away their ability to cut that funding, to block that funding, or to take hostage that funding for the remainder of the Trump administration.”
That’s the part Democrats really don’t want to talk about.
How Democrats Tried to Kill It
The package is the result of a monthslong standoff in Congress after Democrats refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis and other American cities, leading to the longest shutdown in agency history.
Think about that for a second. Democrats held DHS hostage. They shut down the agency responsible for protecting the border because they didn’t like the fact that ICE was doing its job. And they did it with a straight face, claiming the moral high ground.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the bill “another $70 billion blank check for ICE and Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine, with no oversight, no accountability and no guardrails.” Jeffries is a reliable vote for open borders and has spent years working to defund the very agencies that keep Americans safe.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise cut through the noise on the House floor: “Make no mistake, if you’re voting yes, you’re not only voting to secure America’s border, you’re voting to fund law enforcement. And if you vote no, you are voting to defund the police.”
Democrats voted no. All of them.
The Road to Get Here Wasn’t Smooth
Republicans didn’t exactly walk this one across the finish line without breaking a sweat. The bill hit turbulence before it ever got to the House floor.
Trump threw a last-minute wrench into the process by demanding that a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund be inserted into the package. But Republicans in both the House and the Senate revolted against the idea of possible taxpayer-funded payouts to Jan. 6 rioters, and administration officials were forced to scrap the plan. GOP leaders had to punt the reconciliation vote until after the Memorial Day recess due to the upheaval.
The legislation also got sidetracked over $1 billion for White House security, including for Trump’s new ballroom. Those proposals proved politically toxic and were scrapped. What’s left is a bill focused entirely on what it should have been about from the start: funding the men and women who enforce the law at the border.
The Senate voted 52-47 to pass the immigration enforcement funding, and the House followed suit. The final Senate vote was nearly party line, with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska the only Republican to oppose it.
And in the House, the bill passed 214-212, with independent Representative Kevin Kiley of California voting against it. Kiley cited the lack of limits on federal immigration enforcement and the process taken to pass the bill as part of his decision. Kiley recently switched his party affiliation to independent, so his vote wasn’t exactly a surprise.
The Bigger Picture Democrats Don’t Want You to See
Democrats didn’t just vote against a spending bill. They voted against funding the Border Patrol. They voted against funding ICE. They voted, unanimously, to leave the agencies that stand between American communities and chaos without a reliable source of money.
Republicans have treated immigration enforcement as a defining issue between the two major political parties and one they hope will carry them to victory in this year’s midterm elections. And after a vote like this one, it’s hard to argue they’re wrong to lean into it.
But there’s something else worth paying attention to here. Through this legislation, Congress is giving ICE more than three times its last annual budget. Though technically this funding is meant to cover three years, the money comes with few stipulations on how and when it should be spent. That flexibility is exactly what the administration needs to move fast and run an aggressive enforcement operation without Congress yanking the rug out every fiscal year.
The money will come at a pivotal time for the Department of Homeland Security, which is under new leadership after Trump replaced Kristi Noem with new Secretary Markwayne Mullin in March.
Democrats spent four months trying to strangle ICE funding. They failed. And now Republicans have made sure this fight doesn’t come back up for three years. As Johnson put it, “By funding it for three years, we’ve taken away their ability to cut that funding or to take hostage the funding for the remainder of the Trump administration. It was Republicans and Republicans alone who did the responsible thing and funded these critically important agencies at this critical time.”
That’s a statement worth reading twice.
The Left spent months betting that they could use the budget process to handcuff Trump’s border agenda. They miscalculated. And the Secure America Act is now headed to the President’s desk as proof of it.
Sources: Fox News, CNBC, NBC News, AP/Boston.com, Courthouse News Service, NPR