Democrats Support Bill That Would Give ICE $10 Billion

The party has few good options for restraining ICE, which is flush with cash thanks to the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

WASHINGTON ― Democrats touted modest constraints on President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement in a bipartisan spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday, warning that shutting down the agency as some progressives have called for would do little to restrain Trump’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

“ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a [continuing resolution] nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, referring to $75 billion in additional funding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement already received from Republicans last year.

“The suggestion that a shutdown in this moment might curb the lawlessness of this administration is not rooted in reality: under a CR and in a shutdown, this administration can do everything they are already doing — but without any of the critical guardrails and constraints imposed by a full-year funding bill,” Murray added.

Some on the left have called for denying funding to ICE in response to the agency’s often brutal tactics, rounding up both immigrants and U.S. citizens in Minnesota and in other states across the country. Others want to restructure or abolish ICE entirely.

But the $64 billion DHS funding bill doesn’t do that. It keeps spending for ICE flat at $10 billion relative to last year’s funding levels. It also includes $18 billion for Customs and Border Protection, which Democrats noted is $1 billion less than requested by the Trump administration.