The Senate Budget Committee advanced the reconciliation bill to fund immigration enforcement after a vote along party lines.
The bill aims to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which were excluded from budget negotiations under a deal to end the most recent government shutdown. Democrats voiced their usual protests over the bill, criticizing the conduct of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.
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Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) sought to find middle ground in his comments, saying Democrats favored border security but he opposed Republicans’ move to bypass the filibuster by pushing the funding via the reconciliation process.
“The right way to do it is like we did in 2013, or even in 2018,” he said. “We can find a bipartisan path to do these things. Reconciliation is obviously an attractive item, because it allows one side to just do whatever the heck it wants, but this is an issue where there is some common cause, if you just sit down and work hard enough to find it.”
“So I’ll oppose the unilateral effort that would put more money into agencies that could be better spent elsewhere.”
After extensive criticism of ICE and the DHS from Democrats, including invocations of the January killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) got in the last word by redirecting attention to those who had suffered as a result of illegal immigration.
“I didn’t come prepared with the long list of victims of illegal immigrant crime: Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and a very long list of … I don’t have the list of the literally tens of thousands, I think over hundreds of thousands, of children lost, immigrant children shuffled through the system, probably into the hands of sex traffickers,” Johnson said. “This administration is trying to do everything they can to find those children. So, again, those are the names that should be mentioned as well.”
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The bill is set to be sent through rapidly by Republicans. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said shortly before the vote on Wednesday that he would like to get a House vote on the reconciliation bill on Thursday if the Senate gets it through.
“We’re ready to move tomorrow … let’s urge them to get it done as quickly as possible,” he said.
