Senate Passes $70 Billion Immigration Bill as Effort to Permanently Ban Trump Settlement Fund Fails

The U.S. Senate voted 52-47 before dawn on Friday, June 5, to pass the Secure America Act — a $69.5 billion budget reconciliation package that funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through fiscal year 2029 [1][2]. The vote capped an 18-hour marathon session in which senators from both parties fought not over the immigration spending itself but over a legally distinct controversy: the Trump administration's $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, which the DOJ has said it will abandon but which Senate Republicans refused to formally kill [3].

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the sole Republican to vote against the final bill [4]. The legislation now moves to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled a vote as early as next week [5].

Where the $70 Billion Goes

The Secure America Act is the largest single immigration enforcement appropriation in U.S. history, roughly tripling the combined annual budgets of ICE and CBP. The money is distributed across four buckets [6]:

• ICE: $38.5 billion — Hiring, training, and compensating officers, agents, investigators, and attorneys; transportation for removal operations; facility and fleet maintenance; IT systems; and coordination with state and local law enforcement.
• CBP: $22.6 billion — Hiring and equipping border patrol agents and support personnel.
• Border Technology and Equipment: $3.5 billion — Inspection equipment, air and marine rapid-response platforms, upgraded surveillance technology, and drug-trafficking interdiction tools.
• DHS General: $5.0 billion — Additional cross-agency border security funding.

Source: American Action Forum

Data as of Jun 5, 2026CSV

Two originally planned components were stripped from the bill before final passage. A $1.5 billion Department of Justice allocation — which would have funded immigration judges through the Executive Office for Immigration Review, along with the DEA, U.S. Marshals, and FBI — was removed after the anti-weaponization fund controversy contaminated all DOJ-related spending in the package [6]. A $1 billion Secret Service allocation tied to White House ballroom security was struck as a Byrd Rule violation [6].

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the package increases primary deficits by $69.5 billion over a decade, with interest costs adding roughly $25 billion [6].

How This Compares to Prior Spending

To put $70 billion in context: the combined annual budget for ICE and CBP in fiscal year 2024 was approximately $25 billion [7]. The Secure America Act effectively doubles the agencies' funding on an annualized basis through 2029. Since 1994, the U.S. Border Patrol budget alone has grown from $400 million to over $7.3 billion in FY2024 — a 765 percent increase adjusted for inflation [7]. The Secure America Act accelerates that trajectory sharply.

Source: American Immigration Council / AAF

Data as of Jun 5, 2026CSV

No prior single piece of legislation has allocated this much to immigration enforcement. The closest comparator is the 2013 Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, which passed the Senate but died in the House and would have authorized roughly $46 billion for border security — though that bill also included a pathway to citizenship and other provisions absent here [7].

Detention Capacity: 135,000 Beds

One of the bill's most consequential provisions is its funding for ICE detention expansion. With the appropriation, ICE has enough money to operate up to 135,000 detention beds through FY2029 [8]. That is more than three times the system's capacity when Trump took office in January 2025, and roughly double the approximately 68,000 detainees ICE held as of February 2026 [9].

ICE has already been acquiring warehouses and converting facilities to expand toward a target of 92,600 beds by fall 2026 [9]. The Secure America Act extends the runway well beyond that.

The expansion occurs alongside an immigration court backlog that now exceeds 3.5 million pending cases nationwide, with an average wait time of roughly 900 days [10]. The original bill included $1.5 billion for DOJ functions that would have funded additional immigration judges, but that money was cut. Critics from both parties have noted the mismatch: expanding detention without expanding adjudication capacity risks warehousing detainees for years without hearings.

The Anti-Weaponization Fund: What It Is and Why It Mattered

The provision that nearly sank the bill was not in the bill at all. The DOJ's "anti-weaponization fund" originated from a settlement of President Trump's $10 billion civil lawsuit against the IRS over the 2019 leak of his tax returns [11]. Under the settlement, the Attorney General established a $1.776 billion fund — drawn from the federal judgment fund, not congressional appropriations — to "hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare" under the Biden administration [12].

The fund's legal basis has been challenged in two federal lawsuits. Plaintiffs argued the administration engineered a "collusive agreement" to bypass the Constitution's Appropriations Clause, manufacturing a massive financial distribution system without congressional consent [11]. Thirty-five former federal judges filed a motion questioning whether the fund was "a product of collusion" [13]. A federal judge temporarily blocked the DOJ from disbursing any money, with a June 12 hearing scheduled on whether to maintain the injunction [3].

Vice President Vance indicated that "anybody can apply" for compensation from the fund, including January 6 defendants convicted of assaulting police officers [13]. That disclosure crystallized bipartisan opposition.

The DOJ's Retreat — and Its Limits

On June 3, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche testified before Congress: "We are not moving forward with the fund, period" [13]. But when reporters asked Trump the same day whether the fund was permanently dead, the president responded, "I'd have to ask the lawyers" and called it "very important" [3].

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana captured the core tension: the fund "absolutely can be used" despite Blanche's comments, because a verbal commitment carries no legal force [3]. Multiple senators argued that without statutory language, taxpayers were "relying on nothing more than a promise" [3].

The Settlement's Other Provisions

Separate from the fund itself, the underlying IRS settlement "forever barred" the IRS from auditing Trump's past tax returns and those of his family members and businesses — protections estimated at roughly $100 million in tax immunity [13]. This provision has received less public attention but remains legally operative regardless of whether the anti-weaponization fund proceeds.

The Amendment Votes: Who Crossed Party Lines

The overnight session produced a sequence of amendment votes that revealed fractures within the Republican caucus:

Democratic amendment to ban the fund outright: The first vote was held open for several hours as three Republican senators — Cassidy, Jon Husted of Ohio, and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — deliberated. Cassidy ultimately voted no; Husted and Sullivan, both facing reelection this year, voted yes. The amendment failed 47-52 [2][4].

Tillis amendment to redirect funds: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) proposed banning the anti-weaponization fund and redirecting the money to a DOJ anti-fraud enforcement fund. Twelve Republicans supported it, along with Collins, Husted, and Sullivan, but Democrats largely opposed it as insufficient. It failed 15-84 [4].

Cassidy-Van Hollen amendment: The two senators proposed redirecting the $1.8 billion plus an additional $100 million into a law enforcement officer settlement fund for officers injured on January 6. Six Republicans supported it, but it too failed [4].

Coons amendment to bar Jan. 6 rioter payouts: Eight Republicans — Cassidy, Collins, Husted, Murkowski, Tillis, Sullivan, Ashley Moody of Florida, and Jerry Moran of Kansas — voted with Democrats to bar payouts to January 6 rioters. The amendment still fell short of the votes needed [4].

The Steelman Case for the Settlement Fund

The DOJ's stated rationale for the fund rests on precedent. The department pointed to Obama-era settlements in which the government used judgment fund payments to resolve mass claims — including settlements with Native American tribes and Black farmers — as evidence that the executive branch has longstanding authority to create compensatory mechanisms through litigation resolution [11].

Supporters of the fund argue that individuals who were subjected to politically motivated investigations or prosecutions under the Biden DOJ deserve a formal redress process, and that the judgment fund exists precisely for this purpose: to pay claims against the government when no other appropriation is available. The legal theory treats the fund as no different from any other tort settlement, with the government as defendant [11].

Critics respond that the analogy fails because those prior settlements resolved lawsuits brought by genuinely aggrieved third parties, whereas here the plaintiff (Trump) and the defendant (his own DOJ) are effectively the same party. The "collusive agreement" framing in the federal lawsuits rests on this distinction [11][13].

Who Is Affected by the Enforcement Provisions

The Secure America Act funds enforcement operations broadly, but its effects are not evenly distributed. The bill funds ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations, which in 2025 and 2026 have concentrated arrests in communities with large Central American, Venezuelan, and Haitian populations [14]. ICE's expanding detention system increasingly relies on facilities in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida [9].

Asylum seekers face a compounding set of pressures. Under rules already in effect or proposed in 2026, asylum applicants must pay a non-waivable $100 filing fee plus $100 annually while their case is pending; those apprehended between ports of entry face a $5,000 penalty; and the Remain in Mexico policy requires applicants to wait outside the U.S. during processing [14]. The Secure America Act's expansion of detention and removal funding amplifies the enforcement infrastructure behind these policies.

Legal permanent residents are not directly targeted by the bill's provisions, but immigration attorneys have noted that expanded ICE-local law enforcement cooperation agreements funded by the bill increase the likelihood of legal residents being swept into enforcement operations, particularly in jurisdictions that use broad criminal database checks [14].

International Comparison

The United States already spends more on immigration enforcement than any other country. Between 2013 and 2018, the U.S., Germany, Japan, the UK, Canada, France, and Australia collectively spent over $33.1 billion on border and immigration enforcement [15]. The U.S. accounted for the majority of that figure. The European Union's border agency, Frontex, reached record funding in 2023 but still receives a fraction of what the U.S. allocates to CBP and ICE combined [15].

The Migration Policy Institute has documented that global spending on immigration enforcement is at historic highs, driven by "enforcement-first" policies across the Global North [15]. But the empirical relationship between enforcement spending and unauthorized entry rates is unclear. U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions have fluctuated dramatically over the past two decades in ways that correlate more strongly with conditions in origin countries — economic crises, political instability, climate disasters — than with enforcement budgets [7][15]. A 2024 analysis from the American Immigration Council noted that the 765 percent inflation-adjusted increase in Border Patrol spending since 1994 did not prevent unauthorized crossings from reaching record highs in FY2023 [7].

What Happens in the House

The bill moves to the House as a budget reconciliation measure, meaning it requires only a simple majority and cannot be filibustered. Speaker Johnson has indicated a vote could occur as early as the week of June 8 [5].

The House's path is not without obstacles. The removal of DOJ funding — including immigration judge positions — has drawn criticism from members who view adjudication capacity as inseparable from enforcement. Some House Republicans have also expressed interest in restoring provisions related to the SAVE America Act, a voter eligibility bill that Republicans attempted to attach as an amendment in the Senate but which failed when four Republican senators — Collins, McConnell, Murkowski, and Tillis — joined Democrats in opposition [4].

The White House has signaled strong support for the enforcement spending. The central question is whether House leadership attempts to reinsert any of the provisions the Senate stripped — particularly DOJ funding or settlement fund language — or passes the Senate text unchanged to avoid a conference committee and get the bill to Trump's desk faster.

If the House passes the bill as-is, it would go directly to the president for signature. If the House amends it, a conference process or additional Senate vote would be required, potentially reopening the settlement fund fight.

The Deficit Math

The $69.5 billion in new spending is not offset by revenue increases or spending cuts elsewhere — it adds directly to the federal deficit [6]. With interest costs, the CBO projects the total fiscal impact at roughly $95 billion over ten years. This comes on top of the broader "One Big Beautiful Bill" reconciliation package moving through Congress, which CBO has estimated could add trillions to the national debt over the next decade.

For context, the entire Department of Homeland Security's annual budget in FY2024 was approximately $62 billion [7]. The Secure America Act alone exceeds that figure, funding just two of DHS's 22 component agencies for three years.

What Remains Unresolved

Several threads remain open. The anti-weaponization fund exists in legal limbo: the DOJ says it is dead, the president has not confirmed that, a federal court has blocked it, and the Senate has refused to legislate its demise. The June 12 court hearing may provide more clarity, or it may not.

The immigration court backlog — now at 3.5 million cases — will not be addressed by this bill, since the DOJ funding that would have supported additional judges was removed [10]. Expanding detention to 135,000 beds without expanding the courts creates a structural problem that both parties acknowledge but neither has resolved.

And the bill's passage through the House, while likely, is not guaranteed. The slim Republican majority means that a handful of defections on any provision could force negotiations that delay or alter the final product.