WASHINGTON — The House narrowly agreed to inject $70 billion more into the Trump administration’s bare-knuckles immigration agenda, a hallmark of the president’s second term.
In a closely watched and party-line vote, lawmakers on Tuesday voted 214-212 for the funding bill (S. 2), Republicans in favor and Democrats against, after the Senate passed the legislation last week. The bill is cleared for Donald Trump’s signature.
“These gulags shouldn’t exist in our country in the first place,” Rep. Herb Conaway (D-3rd), referring to immigrant detention sites, said Tuesday in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.
All New Jersey Democrats voted against the bill.
“These are not people who are here to be a detriment to our country,” Conway said of the majority of people swept up and held in what some describe as inhumane conditions. “These are people who are here to add to the richness of our country.”
New Jersey Republicans Jeff Van Drew and Chris Smith voted for the measure. Spokespeople for the two did not respond to requests for comment.
Warehouse liability
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th), who has not been seen publicly in three months in Washington, was not present. Kean faces a tough reelection race against military veteran Rebecca Bennett, and Trump’s immigration actions — in particular the immigrant detention warehouse that the U.S. government wants to open in his district — has emerged as a political liability for him.
Kean’s chief of staff and communications director did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Kean’s health or whether he supported the legislation. Kean, with an undisclosed medical issue, has missed more than 100 roll-call votes since March 5, when he voted in the House.
The bill headed to Trump’s desk provides enough money for the Department of Homeland Security through the remainder of Trump’s second term — a fresh injection of cash for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, each a well-funded agency within the department.
A Republican budget law passed in summer 2025 provided about $170 billion for immigration and border enforcement measures, sufficient funding for the remaining two and a half years of Trump’s term.
From that funding, the administration has built a detention network by hiring agents, conducting hardline sweeps and establishing or reopening closed detention sites, such as Delaney Hall in Newark.
Armed with this cash, Homeland Security has also considered military sites, including Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington County, to expand its detention web.
“Taken together, Republicans are proposing to spend nearly a quarter trillion dollars,” said Democrat Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, who represents suburban Philadelphia, “to expand detention camps, fund mass deportation, increase surveillance and accelerate an immigration crackdown that has already caused enormous harm.”
‘Really just peanuts’
Delaney Hall, the scene of recent clashes between immigration agents and protestors, is the largest ICE detention center on the East Coast. The Biden administration pushed to reopen the site before the Trump administration did in 2025, signing a 15-year contract worth more than $1 billion.
Of the $70 billion, the new bill provides $9.55 billion to Customs and Border Protection and $7.45 billion to ICE to “hire, pay, train, and equip.” It also allocated about $13 billion for CBP funding and $31 billion for general purposes for ICE.
“It’s a slush fund for ICE to continue abusing communities across America,” said Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat. “To the Trump regime, it’s really just peanuts.”
Democrats have pushed without success for months to increase oversight measures within Homeland Security, in particular at ICE detention sites.
The bill hit a snag early Tuesday evening: Republicans had been poised for passage with a margin of three, and then GOP holdouts flipped to knot the vote: 213-213.
As the floor buzzed, members and staff realizing the tie, Republican Party leaders pressed holdout Tim Walberg of Michigan. Party whips encircled him for a few minutes before he relented, changing the vote to 214-212. The presiding member promptly gaveled the vote closed.
It was not immediately clear what Walberg, a committee chairman and typically reliable party voter, may have gained in return.
‘Republicans alone’
Immigration policing is about more than detention and border skirmishes, Republicans said. “In districts like mine, border security and economic security go hand in hand,” said Rep. Nick Langworthy of New York, whose district abuts Canada. “Much of this work happens outside of the spotlight.”
To the ascendent nationalist wing of the Republican Party, the soon-to-be-law is a mark of success for what Trump promised on the 2024 campaign trail. “By fully funding ICE and CBP through president Trump’s term, this bill gives our homeland defenders the resources they need,” said Texas Republican Lance Gooden.
After passage, Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who controls the floor agenda in the chamber, appeared in the Rayburn Room, an ornate space with towering paintings and antique vases off the floor. With him were families who said undocumented migrants had killed their loved ones.
“It was Republicans — Republicans alone — who did the responsible thing and funded these important agencies at this critical time,” Johnson said.
Both documented and undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes, according to the American Immigration Council, an advocacy and research group that compared demographic and crime data from 1980-2022.
In that window, as immigration grew in the U.S., crime did not. “In other words, when immigration goes up, crime stays the same or goes down,” researchers said.
“Immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than the U.S.-born for each of the last 150 years,” the researchers said. “And today, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than those who were born in the United States.”
