{"id":132015,"date":"2026-06-05T13:31:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T19:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trumps-deportation-agenda-is-about-to-get-a-70b-infusion-from-congress\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T14:16:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:16:21","slug":"trumps-deportation-agenda-is-about-to-get-a-70b-infusion-from-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trumps-deportation-agenda-is-about-to-get-a-70b-infusion-from-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s deportation agenda is about to get a $70B infusion from Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Senate
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., walks from the chamber to his office at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 4, 2026. (AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite)<\/span>(AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 With virtually no strings attached, Congress is on the verge<\/a> of providing a sizable infusion of cash to the Department of Homeland Security<\/a>, powering President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> mass deportation agenda<\/a> for the remainder of his term in the White House.<\/p>\n

The nearly $70 billion package, which cleared the Republican-held Senate in a middle of the night vote<\/a> and now heads to the House, was declared a \u201crotten bill\u201d by the Democratic leader and an “ATM for ICE\u201d by pro-immigrant advocates.<\/p>\n

But for those aligned with Trump\u2019s campaign promise for the largest mass deportation operation<\/a> in U.S. history, it all but guarantees an uninterrupted flow of money to carry out the administration’s immigration enforcement operations<\/a> \u2014 and comes on top of some $170 billion Congress already approved for the department last summer, as part of Trump’s big tax breaks bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to arrest people, we\u2019re going to continue to detain people and we\u2019re going to keep deporting people,\u201d Trump border czar Tom Homan told CBS News on Friday.<\/p>\n

He hinted at summer sweeps of enforcement actions coming next to New York City.<\/p>\n

More money, fewer guardrails <\/strong><\/p>\n

The work of Congress comes at a pivotal time for the Republican president and his party as they face restless voters before the midterm elections. About one in three U.S. adults know someone who has been impacted by Trump\u2019s immigration operations, according to an AP-NORC poll<\/a> conducted in April. And as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, most say it\u2019s no longer a great place for immigrants.<\/p>\n

The funding package from Congress is just a slim dozen-page bill<\/a> that carries none of the usual guardrails or directives typically demanded in legislation. It turns loose $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and billions for the Border Patrol, and others, prepaying the department\u2019s operations<\/a> into 2029.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir options are limitless in terms of what they can do with this money,\u201d said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director at America’s Voice, a longtime advocacy organization for immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is such a hard thing to accept as a taxpaying citizen that our dollars are going to this massive, mass deportation machine, while Americans are struggling to meet health care costs, and have access to food and they\u2019re paying so much in gas.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration has sought to shift the debate over its immigration operations, installing new leadership at Homeland Security in the aftermath of violent scenes of immigration enforcement earlier this year and the shooting deaths of Americans Renee Good<\/a> and Alex Pretti<\/a> in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Rather than the dramatic street sweeps, the administration is working behind the scenes on actions that are stripping immigrant groups of their ability to remain in the U.S., by doing away with Temporary Protected Status<\/a> or making it more difficult to secure green cards<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children, have reported delays in renewing their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals<\/a> status, exposing them to potential deportation.<\/p>\n

But protests on American streets<\/a> continue, including over detention conditions<\/a> at the Delaney Hall facility<\/a> in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Homeland Security continues to hire more ICE agents \u2014 it’s hosting an employment fair next month in Florida \u2014 build more detention facilities<\/a> and partner with countries around the world<\/a> to take people who are being deported from the U.S.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the department said Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin<\/a> are \u201claser focused on ensuring the hardworking men and women\u201d of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are fully funded. It said the package from Congress \u201cwill ensure our critical national security operations continue despite any Democrat attempts to hold our great patriotic employees hostage in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Power of the purse becomes a blank check<\/strong><\/p>\n

Typically a funding package from Congress would run hundreds pages or more, with a range of specific instructions about how the money can be spent and on what timelines.<\/p>\n

Congress, after all, holds the power of the purse, and often uses that constitutional role to put checks on the administration.<\/p>\n

But after Democrats refused to fund Homeland Security earlier this year following the violence in Minnesota, Republicans retaliated by using the congressional budget resolution process to muscle the package through on their own, outside of the traditional appropriations channels.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same process both parties have used in the past, most recently on Trump\u2019s 2025 tax cuts bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll this important oversight doesn\u2019t happen,\u201d said Bobby Kogan, a former staff member of the Senate Budget Committee and now at the Center for American Progress, a think tank.<\/p>\n

Overnight, Democrats in the Senate worked to exert that authority, offering amendments to ensure Congress had some say in the process. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, for example, sought to protect \u201cDreamers\u201d from deportation as their DACA renewals are being delayed. But those efforts all failed.<\/p>\n

Deportations not enough, for some<\/strong><\/p>\n

Meanwhile the administration is under enormous pressure to deliver on its promise to boost deportations to some 1 million a year, after the Republican president’s first year numbers fell short.<\/p>\n

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, is a leader of the Mass Deportation Coalition that is pushing the Trump administration to stick to its promises<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s talking about it like ICE is about to get another massive cash injection, and that\u2019s not how I see it at all,” he said. “They’re getting like life-support money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not asking them to keep going,\u201d Howell said. \u201cWe’re asking them to start.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howell said there’s little chance the Trump administration will be able to reach the president’s deportation goals unless it drops its priority to go after what they call the \u201cworst of the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n

His group put out a framework earlier this year that proposes more comprehensive sweeps to arrest immigrants, particularly in the workplace. He also wants to see the Trump administration make it more difficult for immigrants who are in the U.S. to use the banking system, get social services and obtain drivers licenses. Republicans in Congress have offered bills tackling some of those issues.<\/p>\n

The administration has been amping up its own rhetoric and recently posted a new website<\/a> that characterizes immigrants as \u201caliens\u201d \u2014 with outer-space themes \u2014 and suggests ways the White House is working to prevent people from staying in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., walks from the chamber to his office at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 4, 2026. (AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite)(AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite) WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 With virtually no strings attached, Congress is on the verge of providing a sizable infusion of cash to the Department of Homeland Security, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5734],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-132015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-associated-press"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132027,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132015\/revisions\/132027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132015"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=132015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}