The House narrowly passed a roughly $70 billion bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol on Tuesday, locking in money for the two agencies through the end of President Trump's term and handing him a major win on the issue he has made central to his second term.

The 214-212 vote fell almost entirely along party lines. Every Democrat opposed the measure, known as the Secure America Act, and was joined by Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, an independent who caucuses with Republicans. The bill now goes to Trump, who is expected to sign it Wednesday.

The legislation finances ICE and the Border Patrol through January 2029, frontloading what would normally be annual appropriations so the agencies are paid through fiscal 2029. The White House puts the breakdown at about $38 billion for ICE, $26 billion for the Border Patrol, and $5 billion to cover unexpected costs.

A one-vote scare on the floor

Passage was not clean. At one point Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan briefly cast a no vote, dropping the tally to 213-213, a tie that would have killed the bill. Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole pulled him aside on the floor, and Walberg switched to yes. He later said he had always intended to support the measure and was simply "getting the attention of leadership" over an unrelated matter involving his committee.

The other late drama came from the right. Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Tim Burchett of Tennessee initially voted against the procedural rule needed to bring the bill up, with several other House Freedom Caucus members withholding votes as they pressed for commitments to write more of Trump's border policies into permanent law. Leadership declined to attach an asylum and parole bill to the package but agreed to hold a separate vote on it before July 4. Roy and Burchett then flipped, and the rule cleared.

Kiley, for his part, said he could not support the bill because it lacked what he called meaningful bipartisan reforms to interior enforcement. Even some hard-line fiscal conservatives backed it; Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who opposed the GOP's last reconciliation bill, called this one among the "purest spending bills" he had seen.

How the fight got here

The vote ended a standoff that had dragged on for months. ICE and Customs and Border Protection had gone without normal appropriations since late January, after Democrats refused to fund them in the wake of an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, where federal agents killed two people, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The impasse triggered a 76-day partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, the longest in the agency's history.

Democrats had demanded conditions in exchange for new money: that officers drop the use of masks, display identification during operations, and obtain a judicial warrant before entering private property, along with limits on raids in sensitive locations. Republicans rejected those terms. After negotiations with the White House collapsed, GOP leaders turned to budget reconciliation, the fast-track process that let them pass the bill in the Senate by simple majority and bypass the chamber's 60-vote threshold.

It is the second time Republicans have used reconciliation in Trump's second term, after last year's tax package, and the first time the process has been used to fund federal agencies for multiple years rather than pass a one-time budget measure. Cole, who pushed the bill through, said he remained "very reluctant" about the tactic and did not expect it to become routine. Democrats warned otherwise. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut called it a "very dangerous precedent."

The add-ons that nearly sank it

For weeks, the bill was weighed down less by immigration than by two unrelated items Trump wanted attached. One was roughly $1 billion in security funding tied to his planned White House ballroom; the other was a $1.8 billion Justice Department "anti-weaponization" fund meant to compensate people who say they were unfairly targeted by the previous administration.

The money for the fund traced back to Trump's settlement with the IRS after he sued over the leak of his 2019 and 2020 tax returns. Critics in both parties branded it a slush fund and warned it could pay out to people convicted in the 2021 Capitol riot. The ballroom money was stripped after the Senate parliamentarian found it did not comply with reconciliation rules, and the fund language was removed as well.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers the department would not move forward with the fund, though Trump muddied that assurance by continuing to praise the idea. A federal judge later issued a temporary restraining order against it, which several Republicans, including Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, said rendered the matter a dead issue. During an overnight Senate session, Republicans defeated a string of amendments that sought to bar the fund outright or block payments to Jan. 6 defendants, leaving the question formally unresolved.

What the money does, and what comes next

The package builds on the nearly $140 billion Congress directed to immigration enforcement last year and arrives as the administration pushes to accelerate removals. Trump has set a goal of deporting about a million people a year and has fallen short of that pace. His border chief, Tom Homan, has promised a surge of agents, including a large deployment to New York City.

The competing arguments were familiar. Speaker Mike Johnson called the bill "long overdue" and said it would leave Democrats unable to defund the agencies for the rest of Trump's term. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries countered that Republicans had handed ICE "another $70 billion blank check, with no oversight, no accountability and no guardrails," and argued the money would be better spent lowering costs for American families.

The funding lands at a pointed moment for the administration. DHS is under new leadership after Trump replaced Kristi Noem with Secretary Markwayne Mullin in March, and the signing will come days before the president's 80th birthday. With the midterms approaching, both parties are betting that immigration will help define the contest.