The collapse of the immigration enforcement bill marks a rare public breach between President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans, who have for months used a partisan budget maneuver to fund ICE and Border Patrol without Democratic votes. The rupture was triggered by two White-House-backed provisions that inflamed members of the president’s own party: a $1.776 billion Justice Department settlement fund for people who claim they were politically prosecuted, and a $1 billion request for White House security upgrades that included $220 million for a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago.
Senate leaders postponed the vote late Thursday afternoon, shortly after a morning meeting with Blanche that multiple senators described as contentious. Thune told reporters that the acting attorney general “had an appreciation for the depth of feeling” in the room, but that did not prevent members from venting their objections in unusually blunt terms. McConnell, the former majority leader, released a statement calling the settlement “utterly stupid, morally wrong” and asked, “The nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?”
The settlement fund — part of a resolution to Trump’s lawsuit over the leak of his tax returns — was announced by the Justice Department earlier in the week. Democrats immediately said they would force amendment votes to block the fund entirely or prohibit payments to anyone convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The amendments are possible because Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to advance the immigration funding bill, which allows an open amendment period. As Democratic support for the restrictions became likely, Republicans began discussing their own limitations, though it was unclear whether those would satisfy the House or the White House.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., a close Trump ally, said, “I think there’s reasonable limitations that can be put on it,” signaling that even the president’s loyalists were searching for an exit.
The $1 billion White House security request had already been stripped from the bill earlier in the week after the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, ruled that large portions of it did not qualify for inclusion in a reconciliation measure aimed at immigration enforcement. The ruling forced Republicans to choose between abandoning the funding and risking a floor defeat. Trump responded on social media by demanding that the parliamentarian be fired and renewing his calls for the Senate to abolish the legislative filibuster — long-standing demands that Senate Republicans have consistently resisted.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the security package had been “a bad idea” from the start. The bill should never have included the other security improvements, he said, “because it’s just giving everybody the ‘billion-dollar ballroom.’”
Trump, asked Thursday whether he was losing control of the Senate, replied, “I really don’t know. I can tell you — I only do what’s right.” Earlier, he had told reporters that he did not need money for the ballroom, which he had originally pledged to fund with private donations, but warned that without the security funding the White House “won’t be a very secure place.”
Complicating the legislative standoff was Trump’s surprise endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in next week’s Republican primary runoff against Sen. John Cornyn. The intervention infuriated Senate Republicans, who view Cornyn as their strongest general-election candidate and fear that a Paxton nomination could cost them their slim majority in November.
“I think it’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us,” Thune said. “There is a political component to everything we do around here.”
The underlying bill would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of Trump’s term. Democrats have blocked those agencies’ funding for months in protest of the administration’s aggressive deportation campaign, forcing Republicans to rely on reconciliation — the same procedure they used to enact Trump’s tax and spending cuts last year — to pass the bill with a simple majority. But reconciliation demands near-total party unity, and the twin controversies over the settlement fund and ballroom security shattered it.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said the Senate’s focus should be on the immigration agencies. “When other extraneous things get in the middle of it,” he said, “it makes it more difficult.”
Schumer, the Democratic leader, said Republicans had no one to blame but themselves. “The only way for Republicans to get out of this box is to stop backing the slush fund, stop pushing the ballroom, and as soon as we get back, join Democrats in fighting to lower Americans’ costs on health care, on housing, on power, on so much else,” he said.
The Senate is expected to return from its Memorial Day recess the week of June 1, by which point Trump’s self-imposed deadline for passing the immigration funding bill will have passed.