Trump pushes GOP to pass party-line bill with funding for ICE, border patrol by June 1

President Trump said Wednesday he wants Congress to send him a party-line package funding immigration enforcement agencies no later than June 1.

That gives Republicans a month-and-a-half after lawmakers return to Washington in mid-April to draft and pass the measure.

Mr. Trump’s post did not address whether the Department of Homeland Security would remain shut down in the interim. Senate Democrats have filibustered multiple full DHS funding bills, but helped to pass one that removed funding for the president’s deportation force.

“Unlike Republicans, Democrats want to DEFUND the Police, Border Patrol, and all Immigration Enforcement,” the president said. “They want to allow Criminals, the Mentally Insane, and Lunatics from all over the World to come into our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, putting Americans in serious danger.”

The GOP is planning to use the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process to pass additional funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and border patrol, as they did in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer.

“We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Mr. Trump said. “We will not allow them to hurt the families of these Great Patriots by defunding them.”

Mr. Trump said he wants the bill on his desk by June, a far more compressed timeline than Congress took to pass the OBBB last year.

But this second budget reconciliation package is expected to be less sweeping. In addition to funding immigration enforcement, Republicans have talked about replenishing defense funds used in the U.S.-led conflict against Iran and attempting to pass pieces of the SAVE America Act, the party’s election integrity bill.

Mr. Trump said in the interim, ICE and Border Patrol agents will continue to get paid on time through the OBBB funding stream. He has also recently tapped into that pot of money to pay Transportation Security Administration agents to help reduce long airport security wait times.

In his social media post on Wednesday, the president used the immigration enforcement funding dispute to make an appeal to voters ahead of the November midterm elections. He urged the American people to reflect on President Biden’s open border policies and Democrats’ desire to return to that era of “zero immigration enforcement.”