WASHINGTON.- Early Thursday morning, Republicans in the Senate managed to approve a budget package under the Reconciliation processin order to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), without addressing the requests of Democrats on conditions in immigration operations.
Now The pressure is on the president of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson (Louisiana), who must approve the idea with simple majority voteswithout support from Democrats, as happened in the Senate, where the package was approved with 50 votes to 48, with the rejection of two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Rand Paul (Kentucky).
The budget seeks to authorize $70 billion in funds for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and the Border Patrol, amid criticism from the majority of Democrats and dozens of civil organizations, who this Thursday sent a letter to Congress to focus on protecting immigrants, not persecuting them.
If the budget package is approved in the House, in addition to ICE, the funding would be for the entire Department of Homeland Security (DHS), after almost two months of closure, due to the lack of agreements on significant changes in immigration operations: forcing agents to stop wearing masks, presenting court orders in detentions in homes and other private spaces, and carrying out detentions without violence.
“Senate Republicans showed the American people where they stand. They don’t care about families suffering with the high cost of child care, food, gasoline, or electricity, but rather about allocating $140 billion dollars to corrupt agencies,” Senate Minority Leader, Democrat, said early Thursday. Chuck Schumer (New York).
In the debate of the process known as ‘vote-a-rama’ – which requires the presentation of motions for different projects in the budget package – Senator Alex Padilla (California) introduced a motion to stop excessive funding of ICE and the Border Patrolremembering that the agencies had received a multimillion-dollar budget in 2025.
“ICE and CBP still have $103 billion in funding from last year’s OBBBA bill,” Senator Padilla’s motion stated. “ICE still has funding of $63.2 billion (84%) from last year’s bill funds.”
The Senate majority leader, the Republican John Thune (South Dakota), is confident that the Reconciliation budget project will be approved in the House of Representatives, although there is still no message of consensus among the Republican leaders in that chamber on the idea approved by senators.
Rejection of greater financing for ICE
Various civil organizations sent a letter to Congress to avoid increasing funding for the persecution of immigrants, in addition to considering that Legislators should focus on approving plans that protect millions of undocumented immigrants.
“Congress has spent decades debating, but failing to approve, a major new path to citizenship, making the status quo in an approach increasingly focused exclusively on immigration aid watch over,” they explain.
The groups cite that 72% of Americans support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, according to a February 2026 survey by Morris Predictive Insights.
Following budget approval in the Senate, the National Alliance for New Americans (NPNA), a coalition of more than 70 leading refugee and immigrant rights organizations, expressed its opposition to the budget idea.
“Communities across America have already paid the price of our taxes being diverted to ICE and CBP. Instead of signing blank checks to endanger our communities, we hope our legislators will invest in what supports families, workers and children in these times of economic uncertainty,” said Nicole Melaku, executive director of the NPNA. “Now that Americans have seen the harms of mass deportations, their tolerance has decreased.”
The NPNA indicated that Americans are more concerned about the country’s economy than about the persecution of undocumented immigrants.
The project will increase the budget deficit by no more than $70 billion dollars over the next 10 years; But there are additional shortfalls that could lead DHS to access up to $140 billion, according to an analysis by Heart for American Growth (CAP).
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