Politics

Senate Republicans Push $70 Billion ICE Funding Plan Through Overnight Vote

By Mike Harper · April 23, 2026

It took an all-night vote marathon, a dozen failed Democratic amendments, and a near-derailment from within their own ranks — but Senate Republicans emerged Thursday morning with a budget resolution that puts $70 billion in ICE and Border Patrol funding within reach.

The Senate passed the non-binding budget resolution 50-48 in the predawn hours, advancing a plan to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection for the next three and a half years — through the remainder of the Trump administration — without a single Democratic vote.

The mechanism Republicans used is called budget reconciliation, a rarely invoked procedure that allows certain budget-related legislation to bypass the Senate’s standard 60-vote threshold and pass with a simple majority. Republicans hold 53 seats. With Democrats unanimously opposed, reconciliation was the only path forward.

DHS has been operating without full funding for more than nine weeks. Most of the department was funded through a separate appropriations measure, but ICE and CBP remained in limbo after Democrats refused to authorize their budgets without major reforms to how immigration enforcement agents operate. That standoff followed two U.S. citizens shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January — deaths that hardened Democratic opposition and gave Republicans a political flashpoint to press their own case on border security.

The vote-a-rama session that preceded the final tally ran nearly six hours. Democrats offered twelve amendments aimed at lowering healthcare costs, restoring food assistance, protecting SNAP, expanding school meals and childcare funding, and shielding consumers from price increases driven by tariffs and the Iran war. All twelve failed, though two — on healthcare affordability — drew support from Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, both facing competitive reelection bids in November.

Two Republicans voted against the final measure: Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

The resolution now moves to the House, where hardline Republicans have been waiting for the Senate to act before taking up the broader DHS funding package. Trump has set a June 1 deadline for the final bill to reach his desk. Reconciliation can be a lengthy process, and the timeline is tight.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer framed the overnight vote in midterm terms.

“Tonight, Senate Republicans showed the American people where they stand — not for families struggling with the high costs of child care, groceries, gasoline, electricity, but for pumping $140 billion towards rogue agencies,” Schumer said from the Senate floor. “We will continue to force vote after vote on the most pressing issue facing Americans.”

Republicans argued the opposite — that Democrats have been using healthcare and food assistance amendments as political cover for blocking immigration enforcement that a majority of Americans support. Whether that argument holds in November, when every House seat and a third of the Senate is on the ballot, is the central question hanging over the entire exercise.