House passes blueprint for ICE, border patrol funding
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House Speaker Mike Johnson delivers remarks on April 15. Photo: Heather Diehl/Getty Images
The House passed a budget blueprint to pave the way for immigration enforcement funding late Wednesday.
Why it matters: The move is a key step toward reopening the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down for a record 75 days.
- The 215-211-1 vote fell along party lines, with Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Calif.) voting present.
- The resolution unlocks the reconciliation process, allowing Republicans to draft legislation that would steer billions to ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
- The Senate approved the same blueprint last week.
The intrigue: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) held the vote open for more than five hours while he negotiated with Republicans upset that leadership decoupled E15 ethanol provisions from the upcoming farm bill.
- A group of about two dozen mostly Midwestern lawmakers held out on casting their votes until Johnson agreed to give them a standalone vote on the E15 measure at a later date.
- Johnson huddled with some of those lawmakers on the floor and in his office before they eventually voted "yes."
State of play: GOP leaders announced earlier this month that they would pursue a two-track funding approach for DHS: fund all of the department except for ICE and CBP in an appropriations bill, and then fund those agencies through the party-line reconciliation process.
- But there's widespread resistance among House Republicans to moving a bill to fund the rest of DHS before getting ICE and CBP funding squared away through reconciliation.
- The hesitation stems from House Republicans' mistrust of their Senate counterparts: Members worry that if the House moves first on passing a DHS funding bill without ICE and CBP, the Senate could backtrack on funding those two agencies.
What's next: The reconciliation process is expected to take weeks, extending the DHS shutdown into May or beyond.
- That delay increases pressure on Congress as DHS workers are set to miss a paycheck next week unless Congress passes a spending bill.
