House GOP moves toward passing $70 billion immigration funding package

A months-long standoff over immigration enforcement could end Tuesday as the U.S. House is set to vote on a $70 billion funding package despite Democrats’ pledge to fight back. It’s a major test for House Speaker Mike Johnson as he tries to solidify one of President Donald Trump’s top domestic priorities.

Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, called the package “a $70 billion blank check for ICE and Border Patrol with no strings attached.”

“This comes after Republicans have already cut health care, food assistance, and they’ve already given ICE $140 billion in their Big Ugly Bill,” Aguilar said at a news conference Tuesday, referring to Republicans’ 2025 tax and spending package. “Furthermore, it doesn’t do a single thing to help Americans with their daily costs of living.”

The package, which has broad support among Republican congressional leadership, would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, both sub-agencies of the Department of Homeland Security that were left out of an earlier spending bill amid Democratic opposition. The $70 billion expansion will last until the end of Trump’s presidency. And it could end a long debate over immigration enforcement policy that began in January – when federal law enforcement agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis as part of an immigration crackdown – and led to the government shutdown.

Trump had called for the bill to be delivered to his desk by June 1. The package advanced from the Senate last Friday 52-47 votes Without any Democratic support.

A preliminary procedural vote is to be held in the House in the afternoon, followed by a final vote on Tuesday. But the future of the package is far from certain, even though it requires only a simple-majority vote for approval. Johnson has struggled to unify the Republican Party as right-wing lawmakers say the measure does not go far enough and some centrists express concerns about immigration enforcement practices given the tough elections in November.

Republican Representative Chip Roy, a Texas radical, told Home Leadership According to Politico, he was undecided. And Rep. Kevin Kiley, who changed his party affiliation from Republican to independent in March but is still affiliated with the GOP, has said he opposes the package without changes to immigration enforcement.

Republicans have narrow majority If Democrats unite in opposition, they could risk losing another handful of votes in the House.

Passing the immigration funding package will be a significant hurdle for Johnson, as he struggles to get other Trump priorities across the finish line with a dwindling number of congressional sessions before the 2026 midterm elections.

Johnson spoke with Trump on Tuesday about ICE and CBP funding as well as an effort to expand a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 that allows the government to collect communications of people outside the US, including how they interact with Americans.

Section 702 of the act is set to expire on June 12 unless Congress extends it. Privacy advocates on both sides of the aisle have called for amending the policy to protect American citizens from government overreach, meaning Johnson will have to rely on some Democratic support to get any extension over the finish line. FISA Section 702 traditionally has both supporters and enemies in every political party.

Meanwhile, Democrats are threatening to withdraw support after Trump nominated Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence. Pulte has no prior intelligence experience and has shown a willingness to use his position to go after Trump’s enemies.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. “The conversations prior to Trump’s announcement regarding Bill Pulte were already in a very sensitive place,” he said at a press conference on Monday. “And then Donald Trump, as he often does, throws a grenade into those sensitive negotiations by promoting Bill Pulte to director of national intelligence.”

Asked whether he would let FISA expire, Jefferies said negotiations were continuing “but obviously for the sake of good-faith negotiations, the effort to promote Bill Pulte to acting director of national intelligence should be immediately reversed. And then let’s see where we end up at the end of the week.”

Some Republicans have also called on Trump to remove Pulte from his position as acting director of national intelligence.

“FISA gives us more than 50% of our most sensitive intelligence and has enabled the United States to prevent numerous terrorist attacks,” said Representative Don Bacon, R-Neb., a liberal who is retiring at the end of this Congress. Posted on x On Monday. “Letting FISA lapse would reflect a nation crippled by excessive partisanship and dysfunction. POTUS can help by canceling plans to keep Bill Pulte as acting DNI.”