Partisan path to DHS funding looms large over House hearing on immigration budget

WASHINGTON (CN) — The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday met with top Trump administration immigration officials to begin considering the Homeland Security Department’s budget for the 2027 fiscal year.

The panel hearing — with lawmakers questioning the heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — was typical of the congressional appropriations process. But it came as Republicans are gearing up to consider a spending plan for the Department of Homeland Security that is anything but.

After nearly two months of partisan breakdown that’s left many DHS programs shuttered, GOP leadership has said Congress will move forward with a two-pronged spending plan for the agency that will see the House vote on a Senate-passed resolution to unlock the bulk of the DHS budget.

Lawmakers will then take up funding for ICE and Border Patrol through a process known as budget reconciliation, a package Republicans have said will set immigration enforcement budget for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term without any input from Democrats.

The spending plan, which has the support of the White House, has nonetheless proven controversial for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Democrats have complained the reconciliation process eliminates all the reforms to ICE and Border Patrol operations they’ve demanded throughout the homeland security shutdown.

And conservative Republicans have bristled at what party leadership have described as a “skinny” reconciliation process — which would fund immigration enforcement but leave off other GOP policy priorities, such as voter ID legislation long demanded by the Trump administration.

The partisan pathway loomed large over the Appropriations Committee on Thursday as lawmakers heard testimony from acting ICE director Todd Lyons, Border Patrol director Rodney Scott and Joseph Edlow, head of CIS.

“Slush funding the government through a series of partisan budget bills that are written in back rooms by Republican leadership, driven only by political interest, is a recipe for catastrophe,” said Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro.

The top Democratic appropriator pointed out that, ahead of the DHS shutdown, the House had passed nearly all its required full-year spending bills. “Abandoning the appropriations process in favor of partisan reconciliation bills will come back to haunt this institution,” she said.

It wasn’t just Democrats on the appropriations panel who expressed reticence about the plan to fund a large swath of DHS through reconciliation.

Nevada Representative Mark Amodei, the Republican chairman of the appropriations committee’s homeland security subpanel, issued a veiled criticism of the administration and the Office of Management and Budget for its insistence on the two-step DHS budget.

“I know the OMB language where people who are the agencies most directly affected are saying, please pass a bill that has a zero in front of your agency and your agency, and pass a reconciliation bill which has no oversight reforms for the lessons we’ve learned from the last one,” said Amodei, addressing Lyons and Scott. “It’s phenomenally interesting, for my part.”

The Nevada Republican said his comments weren’t directed at any of the agency heads but instead at other administration officials he said might be tuned in. “I hope somebody’s, you know, listening on the interwebs,” he quipped.

The protracted DHS shutdown was a central theme for the heads of the immigration enforcement agencies on Thursday as they made their case for additional funding to House appropriators.

“It’s bewildering to me that we are here today discussing a fiscal year budget for 2027 when Congress has yet to enact a budget for 2026,” said Scott. “Seven months into the fiscal year, CBP has been shut down more than we’ve been open.”

The Border Patrol director said the “damage” done to his agency went beyond missing wages for agents, telling lawmakers that vehicle maintenance, intelligence gathering and other operations were hampered by the lack of funding. The appropriations lapse is also affecting outside contractors, he said, some of which are facing layoffs or closures.

“The problems will compound until this body takes action and funds DHS,” Scott said.

Though the Homeland Security Department has been largely unfunded since late February, immigration enforcement agencies got more than $100 million in extra cash last summer as part of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” Trump’s first marquee budget reconciliation plan.

Lyons said the roughly $75 million the measure handed to ICE “fundamentally transformed” its operations, allowing it to hire thousands of new employees and expand its detention capabilities. But he argued the bill also prevented the agency from using those funds for certain purposes.

“The limitations Congress placed on these funds preclude ICE from using reconciliation funding for basic needs, such as paying non-law enforcement personnel, operating basic services within ICE, conducting criminal investigations into human trafficking and child exploitation and more,” Lyons said.

During Thursday’s hearing, the Trump administration immigration enforcement heads faced questions about how their operations and interactions with Congress would change now that DHS is under new leadership. Former Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin last month took over as head of the agency, replacing Kristi Noem, who the president fired after a week of difficult hearings on Capitol Hill.

Lyons told Texas Representative Veronica Escobar that ICE had increased its legislative affairs staff in response to complaints from lawmakers that the agency wasn’t replying to congressional oversight requests in a “timely manner.”

Amodei echoed calls for better communication between DHS and Congress on oversight, saying the agency had done a “terrible” job of sharing information with Congress under Noem and that he expected more prompt responses with Mullin in charge.

“I think some of the shackles have probably been taken off,” he said.

Illinois Representative Lauren Underwood pressed Lyons to provide a “real explanation” to lawmakers about the rate of deaths of migrants in ICE custody, which have reportedly reached a 20-year high.

The agency director argued that ICE has had a record number of detainees, its highest level since 2003. He appeared to suggest the volume of people in immigration enforcement custody had inflated the death rate, adding he didn’t want to see anyone die in ICE custody.

But Underwood was unconvinced. “That’s not a valid rationale,” she retorted.

“It could not be clearer that your agencies are out of control,” the Illinois Democrat told the ICE and Border Patrol heads. “These are leadership problems, not funding problems.”

Democrats have long demanded ICE and Border Patrol implement significant reforms, including changes to agency policy on search warrants and limitations on where federal agents can conduct immigration enforcement activities. None of those reforms, however, is likely to become reality under a Republican budget reconciliation process.

Congressional leadership has said they are aiming to bring the GOP budget resolution to the floor as soon as next week.

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