A House panel next week is set to advance a bill that would provide $5 billion in funding for a southern border wall.
The House Appropriations Committee has scheduled a vote for Wednesday on the fiscal 2019 Homeland Security Appropriations bill, which includes funding for the nation’s border security.
[More: Senate to ignore $5 billion border wall plan in the House]
The bill would provide funding for an additional 200 miles of “new physical barrier construction” along the Mexican border as well as for additional border security that would help implement a strategy of “100 percent scanning” of the border within five years.
While Republicans hold the majority on the panel and can likely advance the measure to the House floor, the bill will draw fierce opposition from Democrats who oppose not only more wall funding but the legislation’s additional funding for new border patrol and interior enforcement agents.
The bill provides $223 million to add 375 new border patrol agents above President Trump’s request plus another $78 million for 400 additional Interior and Customs Enforcement agents.
Some Democrats are calling for abolishing ICE or at least over hauling it because they believe ICE is splitting up illegal immigrant families at the southern border.
The Homeland Security funding bill won’t get a floor vote until September at the earliest. The House at the end of next week leaves town until after Labor Day.
The bill could also run into opposition not only from Democrats but also a group of moderate Republicans who want a legal pathway to citizenship for Dreamers in exchange for significant border wall funding.
Both the House and Senate have tried and failed to pass several immigration reform bills that include provisions to legalize the the nation’s 1.8 million Dreamers, who came to the U.S. illegally as children.
The House border wall funding bill also clashes with the Senate’s version. In the Senate, lawmakers have already advanced a bill funding border security and it includes only the $1.6 billion President Trump requested in his fiscal 2019 budget.
Senate Republicans worked out a bipartisan bill because passing legislation requires 60 votes in the upper chamber and the GOP controls only 51 votes.
President Trump is angling for more border wall money than the $1.6 billion he requested.
Any additional wall funding, however, is likely to come as a result of a deal negotiated at the end of the year with Democrats and Republicans and wrapped into a final spending package. Significant additional border wall funding probably cannot win Democratic support without providing pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.
