(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans early Thursday morning approved a blueprint for their budget bill to fund immigration enforcement after an all-night voting marathon.
The vote marks the first step in a new plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down since mid-February — making it the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
The budget resolution, which kicks off the drafting process of a bill that Republicans said would provide billions of dollars to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, was approved by a vote of 50-48.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Rand Paul joined with the Democrats in voting against the resolution. All other Republicans voted in favor of it, except for Sen. Chuck Grassley, who missed the vote as he recovers from a procedure to remove gallstones.
The Senate approved the resolution at about 3:36 a.m. after a vote-a-rama that lasted approximately six hours.
During that time, the Senate considered 17 amendments. Democrats, as promised, forced a number of votes on affordability-related items. Their amendments aimed at lowering the cost of everyday expenses — ranging from health care to electricity to childcare to gas prices.
Though a number of Democratic amendments won the occasional Republican supporter, Republicans ultimately defeated every Democratic-led amendment.
“What kind of bubble are they living in? How apart are they from people’s real needs? And instead, take that money, which should have gone to lowering people’s costs, and giving it to an agency that everyone knows needs reform,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on the Senate floor after the GOP budget blueprint passed.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, vowed that Republicans are going to work to “get the job done” by June 1 — the deadline publicly set by President Donald Trump for Republicans to fund the immigration enforcement agencies.
“The vast majority of Republicans stuck together to do something Democrats are refusing to do: Fully fund the Border Patrol and ICE for three and a half years through the Trump presidency,” Graham said in a statement Thursday morning.
But the overnight vote-a-rama was just the first step in what could be a lengthy reconciliation process.
The GOP’s budget resolution now heads to the House where Speaker Mike Johnson hopes his rank and file will sign off on the Senate’s resolution next week. If approved, House members may begin directing committees to craft their bill that meets the instructions in the budget resolution. If House and Senate Republicans agree on legislation, both chambers will have to pass it again. That will include a second vote-a-rama in the Senate.
The GOP’s funding push for ICE and CBP comes amid the record-long DHS shutdown, now in its 68th day.
Many federal employees across DHS, including the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have gone without pay as Congress struggles to advance a funding deal. Throughout the shutdown, ICE and CBP have continued to receive funds due to an influx of cash provided in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress last summer, and the administration has redirected other funding to support TSA workers.
Democrats have said they won’t support funding for ICE and CBP without reforms to their operating procedures, after two American citizens in Minneapolis were fatally shot by federal agents earlier this year.
Republican leaders, meanwhile, are expected to hold off on passing a full DHS funding bill until they can successfully fund the two immigration enforcement agencies.
“We’ve got to make sure that we don’t isolate and, as I say, make an orphan out of key agencies of the department. And there’s some concern on our side that if you do the bulk of the department first before that, then they could be left out. We can’t allow for that,” Speaker Johnson said earlier this week.
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