Senate GOP leaders have canceled plans to vote this week on a party-line immigration enforcement bill, a major setback as lawmakers contend with President Donald Trump’s personal political agenda.
Several Republican senators said action on the legislation would wait until after a weeklong Memorial Day recess — guaranteeing that Congress would blow a Trump-set June 1 deadline for the immigration funding.
“We will pick up where we left off,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters after a closed-door lunch where he informed GOP senators that they were being sent home amid the impasse.
House GOP leaders quickly followed suit and canceled plans for a Friday vote on the immigration package. Members will instead head home for the recess after votes wrap up Thursday night.
The Senate’s decision was driven by fierce internal divides over a politically sensitive issue not related to the core purpose of the bill — pumping tens of billions of dollars into Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies.
It came after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche struggled Thursday to quash GOP concerns over a newly announced $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. Leaders had already concluded they would have to omit a $1 billion Secret Service funding line item that could have gone toward Trump’s White House ballroom due to internal dissension.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) pointed to the weaponization fund, telling reporters that the White House “dropped a bomb.” A senior Senate GOP aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called the decision “a delay of the administration’s making.”
“Senators are still solidly behind the ICE and Border Patrol funding,” the person added. “A number of concerns remain about the anti-weaponization fund. Those need to get worked out.”
Republicans believe it’s now up to the administration to figure out a path forward for salvaging the immigration enforcement bill. Asked if he thought a resolution could be reached to the impasse over the fund, Thune said, “That’s what I’m counting on.”
Blanche met privately with Senate Republicans as the administration and GOP leaders tried to defuse the controversy over the fund.
GOP leaders believed they had enough members who would support a proposal targeting the fund that it would ultimately be added into the filibuster-skirting bill, as POLITICO first reported Wednesday.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said that Blanche during the meeting made a commitment to senators that settlements would not be granted to anyone who assaulted police during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — a guarantee he refused to make when testifying earlier this week.
A memo that the Justice Department circulated to Senate GOP offices Thursday, however, did not include that detail, according to a copy reviewed by POLITICO. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who noted she missed part of the meeting for committee meetings, said senators still needed “clarity.”
Asked if the briefing changed her mind, Collins, who has been critical of the fund, told reporters, “No.”
Two people granted anonymity to describe the meeting said the meeting did not go well for the administration and that Blanche was not persuasive amid a grilling by dozens of GOP senators.
Money for the fund isn’t included in the GOP’s immigration enforcement bill. But because the bill involves Justice Department funding and the Senate Judiciary Committee is involved in the bill, senators have a path to add language related to the fund into the bill with only 51 votes.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
