House approves spending bills despite many Democrats’ objections to ICE funds : NPR

The House voted to approve a series of spending bills that would prevent a government shutdown. The Senate must still vote on the measure.

Zayrha Rodriguez/NPR

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Zayrha Rodriguez/NPR

The House passed the latest round of funding measures covering large swathes of the federal government on Thursday, sending the package to the Senate ahead of a Jan. 30 deadline to avoid a partial shutdown.

The House approved the funds with overwhelming bipartisan support – with one exception.

Only seven House Democrats voted for the bill funding the Department of Homeland Security through September, citing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s tactics in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

“ICE is completely out of control and using taxpayer dollars to brutalize American citizens and law-abiding immigrant families,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday.

Despite the razor-thin Republican majority in the House, the measure still passed by a vote of 220 to 207. Democrats saw the vote as an opportunity to rebuke the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Macklin Good, 37, in Minneapolis earlier this month.

The Senate is expected to vote next week on these remaining funding measures as a group, forcing Democrats to choose whether to approve or oppose the funding package, which also includes billions of dollars for defense, health care, transportation and housing.

Democrats had tried to insert tougher measures to rein in ICE, such as prohibiting the agency from deporting or detaining U.S. citizens, prohibiting agents from deploying excessive force and explicitly banning them from conducting raids on places of worship, hospitals and schools.

Democrats who reluctantly backed the final package said they secured dedicated funds for the first time to provide body cameras to ICE agents and allocated more money for surveillance and de-escalation training. The final legislation also maintains funding for ICE, while cutting the enforcement and deportation operations budget by $115 million and reducing detention bed capacity.

“This bill is not perfect,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat whose district covers a long stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. “However, this bill is better than the alternatives of either funding the department under a continuing resolution or shutting down the government.”

Democratic leaders concluded that these concessions were not enough, although they did not prevent members from voting in favor of the measure.

The top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), ultimately decided that serious concerns about ICE outweighed the bill’s gains, such as increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Agency, and pay increases for air traffic controllers and Coast Guard members.

“We have to face what happened in this country and we cannot turn a blind eye,” she said. “Make the decision based on your heart and what you believe in.”

Rep. Tom Cole, (R-Okla.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said Democrats are ignoring most of the content of the funding measure, which includes appropriations for a host of agencies Americans rely on.

“You vote against people who are going to help you if there’s a hurricane or a tornado or some sort of disaster,” Cole said. “Why the hell should they be penalized?”

House members are leaving Washington ahead of a planned winter storm for a week-long recess, leaving the Senate to complete the appropriations process before a deadline late next week.

Funding from the federal government ran out at the end of last September. The government remained shut down for a record 43 days as Democrats fought to renew expiring health insurance subsidies. The shutdown ended with an agreement to fund three of the twelve credit programs through September 2026, but provided only a short-term extension until January 30 for the remaining funding categories.

Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she would vote for the remaining funding measures, which keep funding essentially stable and avoid the deep cuts sought by the Trump administration.

“The suggestion that a shutdown right now could rein in this administration’s lawlessness is not rooted in reality: Under a CR and in the event of a shutdown, this administration can do everything it already does — but without any of the critical guardrails and constraints imposed by a full-year funding bill,” Murray said. wrote in a statement. “The hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to bring about the kind of accountability we need.”