House approves Homeland Security funding amid ICE uproar

The House passed funding for the Department of Homeland Security Thursday by a narrow margin amid a Democratic uproar over President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.

The 220-207 vote puts Congress on track to clear the last annual spending bills ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline, avoiding a partial government shutdown. The DHS measure funds the Coast Guard, ICE, CBP, FEMA, TSA and other agencies through the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30.

It was a victory for House GOP leaders, who overcame attendance issues and concerns about the overall size of the spending package within their ranks. The House has now passed nine of the 12 annual appropriations bills, with the remainder set for a vote later Thursday.

Democrats demanded a standalone vote on the DHS funding bill so that their caucus could voice their objection to the Trump administration’s harsh enforcement tactics — a concern that has been amplified by recent ICE and CBP operations in Minnesota.

As recently as Tuesday morning, it was not clear that the two parties would be able to strike a compromise on funding DHS.

“That was really negotiated right to the end,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator in the House, told reporters. “And I believe that portion of the negotiation had to go to the White House, where you had Stephen Miller and somebody who was really making a determination on it.”

DeLauro was among the Democrats who voted against the bill, announcing on the floor that she had too many misgivings about the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Only seven Democrats ended up voting for the bill; some argued that the negotiated bill was preferable to the alternatives — a stopgap measure that would give Trump a freer hand to run the department, or a shutdown that would affect key nonimmigration agencies such as TSA. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only Republican opposed.

Divisions over DHS funding have only deepened as the Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement, even far from the border. Coming to an agreement only got harder as Democrats stepped up their criticism after two incidents in Minnesota: one where an ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renée Good and another when an ICE officer shot an undocumented man during an arrest.

Democrats were hoping to put significant guardrails on the conduct of ICE and CBP officers in the spending bill. The compromise bill that includes funding for body cameras and additional training did not satisfy most on the Democratic side.

House Democratic leaders, including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, spoke out against the bill during a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday. Leadership heard “overwhelmingly” from their caucus members ahead of the vote that this bill did not do enough to rein in ICE following recent clashes in Minnesota.

Some Democrats wanted more than guardrails, calling instead for defunding and dismantling ICE altogether.

“It has some additional provisions for body cameras, for extra training, things like that, that we think will increase the professionalism, but it’s a good, solid bill,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Wednesday.

The final compromise would keep ICE funded at $10 billion for the fiscal year and would reduce the agency’s budget for enforcement and removal efforts. It would require DHS to use $20 million to outfit immigration enforcement agents with body cameras, direct the department to give officers more training on defusing conflict while interacting with the public and provide a separate $20 million for independent oversight of DHS detention facilities.

The House will vote separately on a three-bill measure to fund the Pentagon and departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation and Education through the end of September. Under a procedural measure approved earlier Thursday, those bills will be bundled together with the DHS measure and a previously approved two-bill package before being sent to the Senate.

The Senate is expected to consider that six-bill package when the chamber returns from recess next week. While many Democratic senators are already announcing their opposition based on the ICE funding, others will be hard-pressed to reject spending on the Pentagon and key domestic agencies — many of which are being funded at levels well beyond what the Trump administration proposed.