WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans have unveiled a $72 billion spending package that includes tens of billions of dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, billions more for Department of Homeland Security immigration enforcement and, for good measure, an extra billion dollars for President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project.
The package is broken into two bills, one released by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the other released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. (You can read the text of these bills here and here.)
Broken down, the GOP package provides $38.2 billion for ICE, $26.1 billion for Customs and Border Patrol, $5 billion for DHS immigration enforcement, $1.5 billion for Department of Justice criminal enforcement, and $1 billion for security for Trump’s ballroom vanity project.
The question of whether Trump has the authority to build a White House ballroom without congressional approval has been tied up in federal court. A district judge rejected Trump’s claim that building this ballroom is a matter of “national security,” but an appeals court last month allowed Trump to proceed with construction, ahead of a June review of the case.
