The Senate passed a nearly $70 billion reconciliation bill for immigration enforcement early Friday morning after rejecting repeated attempts by members of both parties to prohibit or restrict a Justice Department “anti-weaponization” fund.
On a mostly party-line vote of 52-47, the Senate sent to the House a bill designed to fund immigration agencies for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term without new restrictions on federal immigration agents sought by Democrats. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the sole Republican to join all Democrats in opposition.
The vote on final passage capped an 18-hour “vote-a-rama” on amendments focused mostly on a nearly $1.8 billion fund announced last month designed to compensate alleged victims of political prosecutions. Critics denounced it as a “slush fund” to reward Trump loyalists who broke the law.
While administration officials later bowed to the backlash and said the fund would not move forward, lawmakers of both parties were concerned it still could. They sought to prohibit it through a provision in the reconciliation bill.
The most closely watched amendment, sponsored by Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., would restrict payouts from the fund only to law enforcement officers who died or suffered from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol or their next of kin. And it would appropriate $100 million to the fund for that effort, offset by a cut to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
