In this 2023 photo, a Honduran migrant is overcome with emotion as he describes the extortion and threats that he says drove him and his partner to flee Honduras with their child. Fraudulent asylum claims are rare, but the Trump administration has issued a new directive targeting lawyers who file false claims. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)
In its latest effort to narrow pathways to immigration to the United States, the Trump administration says it will crack down on attorneys who file fraudulent asylum claims for their clients.
The U.S. has long granted asylum to people who are unable or unwilling to return to their home countries because they have been persecuted, or fear persecution, based on their race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinions.
In a directive it issued on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security instructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to develop anti-fraud policies and to take action against immigration attorneys who file false asylum claims in an immigration court.
James Percival, Homeland Security’s general counsel, said “it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country.”
“Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools,” Percival said in a statement. “Now, thanks to this directive, ICE attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and stop the abuse of our asylum system by illegal aliens and attorneys.”
The limited available data suggests that asylum fraud is extremely rare. A 2015 report by the Government Accountability Office found that as asylum applications increased during the early 2010s, the terminations of asylum status due to discovered fraud declined, from 103 in 2010 to 34 in 2014.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services granted asylum to a total of 76,122 people during that period and terminated asylum status for 374 of them because of fraud.
The administration’s new anti-fraud directive comes one month after a federal appeals court struck down an executive order by President Donald Trump that sought to close the U.S. border to asylum-seekers.
A panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump’s executive order, which he issued on the first day of his second term, and subsequent administration guidance to turn back asylum-seekers without a court hearing were “unlawful” and “cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Tennessee Republican leaders unveil their “Immigration 2026” agenda at a news conference in January. Tennessee and other conservative states are mandating that state and local social service providers verify and report the immigration status of the people they serve — in some cases threatening stiff penalties for public employees who fail to comply. (Photo by John Partipilo/ Tennessee Lookout)
An increasing number of conservative states are mandating that state and local social service providers verify and report the immigration status of the people they serve — in some cases threatening stiff penalties for public employees who fail to comply.
Under federal law, immigrants who are in the United States illegally are generally barred from receiving public benefits such as nonemergency health care, food aid and housing help, though a handful of left-leaning states use their own money to provide such benefits.
Supporters of the new verification and reporting laws say they will help curb illegal immigration by making it more difficult for people who aren’t eligible for public aid to receive it.
Government-funded health care, housing aid and the right to have a driver’s license are a “pull factor that encourages illegal immigration,” said Cooper Smith, director of homeland security and immigration at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank that has worked on policy development with the current Trump administration.
Government benefits, Smith said, are “an incentive for (immigrants) to come here and cross the border and make this their home, and we don’t want to see that.”
In Tennessee, legislators this week sent a bill to Republican Gov. Bill Lee that would require all state and local agencies to verify the immigration status of people who apply for federal, state or local government benefits, and to report those who are here illegally to the legislature and the state’s new immigration enforcement agency.
The measure, which the governor is expected to sign, authorizes the state attorney general to investigate possible violations, and threatens jail time or a loss of state funding for workers or agencies that fail to comply.
The potential penalties in Tennessee’s law are especially strict, but this year Indiana, Utah, and Wyoming also enacted laws requiring state and local agencies to verify the immigration status of people applying for certain benefits. In Indiana and Wyoming, agencies also must report immigrants who are here illegally to federal authorities. Louisiana enacted a similar verification and reporting law last year.
The Indiana and Wyoming laws go beyond the specific individuals applying for aid.
In considering an application for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Indiana law requires agencies to notify federal authorities if they cannot verify the immigration status of any member of an applicant’s household. Similarly, the Wyoming law requires the state health department and the state department of family services to notify federal immigration authorities if they determine that anyone applying for public benefits resides in a household that includes a person who is here illegally.
Critics say the new state laws will dissuade many people who are eligible for benefits — especially those with family members who are here illegally — from getting help they are entitled to, and force state and local officials to perform an immigration enforcement role for which they are ill equipped.
“They have to do this verification process for everybody that walks in the door. This is something that slows down services for every Tennessean in the name of collecting data and trying to make assessments that folks are not trained to make,” Democratic state Sen. Jeff Yarbro said last month during the floor debate on the bill.
“There’s probably no one who understands enough of the rules to make that determination,” he said. “But we are forcing that decision upon every single government office in the state of Tennessee — it’s just a little bit insane.”
Tanya Broder, an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrants, said the new laws represent an escalation of state anti-immigration efforts. She said the measures demonstrate that conservative states are moving in lockstep with the Trump administration.
“There are many, many states that impose restrictions on access to public to state and local public benefits, but some of these reporting requirements that states are proposing now likely do violate the law,” Broder said. “I think they are sowing a campaign of fear and misinformation.”
Broder added that the fear of penalties might prompt agency workers in Tennessee to overreport and potentially engage in racial profiling.
The Tennessee bill is part of a sweeping package of immigration enforcement measures the state legislature approved this year. Tennessee’s broad immigration agenda was crafted in coordination with the White House, specifically with Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Earlier this month, Lee signed a measure that requires state judges to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. And last month, the governor signed a bill that makes it a crime under Tennessee law for an adult to refuse or fail to leave the state within 90 days of a final order of removal. The law also makes it a crime for immigrants to try to enter the state if they have an outstanding deportation order.
Other bills that would require local sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration agents and make it illegal for people who are living in the U.S. illegally to operate a commercial vehicle or truck in the state are on Lee’s desk awaiting his signature.
Smith, of the America First Policy Institute, said Tennessee is “serving as a model for other states to follow.”
Republicans struggled this year to secure funding for the Department of Homeland Security, Smith noted, “so they know that their ability to get meaningful legal immigration reform, through both houses of Congress and signed by the president, is very, very unlikely,” he said. “So the next step is to do as much as you can at the state level.”
Julia Gelatt, an associate director at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, agreed with Smith’s assessment of the political situation.
“There are things that the federal government can’t control, or that may be harder to achieve at the federal level, particularly with a Congress that isn’t passing bills,” Gelatt said.
“We know that Stephen Miller advised Tennessee on their immigration bills, and I think that his philosophy is that the federal government and state governments should make life in the United States so hard for people who don’t have legal status that they decide to go home.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
ICE agents search the passenger of a truck as they arrest both him and the driver during a traffic stop in February in Robbinsdale, Minn. Almost a quarter of ICE arrests in recent months have been "collateral," a category that has raised legal questions, rather than "targeted" arrests based on preexisting warrants or removal orders. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
A quarter of immigration arrests since August were labeled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as “collateral,” a type of arrest and detention that’s been challenged in court as an end run around civil rights.
Public outrage and lawsuits over the arrests may be tamping down the large-scale sweeps that foster them, but tens of thousands were arrested this way between August and early March.
Immigration arrests are usually based on warrants obtained ahead of time, showing either a removal order from immigration court or evidence of a crime or charge that makes the person subject to deportation.
But collateral arrests can result from street sweeps and raids in which a person is singled out for questioning based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant. That person could be taken into custody if agents think they may be subject to deportation and also likely to flee if released.
Labeled for the first time ever, the collateral arrests are reported from August to early March in ICE arrest data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Stateline. In that time there were about 64,000 collateral arrests, a quarter of the 253,000 total arrests by ICE.
About 70% of the collateral arrests were for people with immigration-related crimes or violations alone, compared with 41% for arrests with warrants. Less than 2% of those with collateral arrests were convicted of a violent crime, one-third the rate of other arrests, and only 18% were convicted of any crime, compared with 33% for other arrests.
The collateral arrests contributed to an overall pattern of lower and lower shares of arrests for serious crimes, and more for immigration offenses alone.
Arrests climbed from about 12,000 in January 2025 to more than 40,000 in December, but fell back to 30,000 this February. The share of people with only immigration-related crimes and violations rose to more than half in December and January, the peak months for collateral arrests, and the share of violent criminals fell from 10% to 4% of arrests in that time.
New policy
ICE announced a new policy in January to issue warrants in real time if agents think an immigrant is deportable and “likely to escape,” though that policy faces a court challenge.
Total arrests and collateral arrests have been falling since December, whether because of the new policy or because of cutbacks in the large-scale street sweeps that tend to produce them.
One factor is public outrage over raids sweeping up noncriminals in places like Minneapolis and Chicago, said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
“The sort of large operations within big cities, as they were occurring, seems to have subsided somewhat,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said. “After the kind of public outcry following Minneapolis, it seems as though, at least for now, that tactic has kind of been paused.”
The Trump administration’s focus on mass deportation opened the way for more collateral street arrests with less investigation, she added.
“If it’s a more targeted arrest, they would take the time to sort of essentially have an investigation. It’s a pretty resource-intensive way that just would not yield the kind of numbers ICE was being told to produce,” she said.
The new policy was filed in court papers in February as a response to a lawsuit over ICE sweeps in the District of Columbia last year, alleging ICE agents “have flooded the streets of the nation’s capital, indiscriminately arresting without warrants and without probable cause District residents whom the agents perceive to be Latino.”
The case resulted in a preliminary injunction in December requiring a halt to warrantless arrests without establishing probable cause that the person is living here illegally and is a flight risk.
One plaintiff in the class-action case, José Escobar Molina, said in the lawsuit that agents in two cars pulled up to him as he approached his work truck on Aug. 21, grabbing him by the arms and legs and handcuffing him without asking any questions. Escobar, 47, said in the court papers that he’s lived in the district for 25 years and has had temporary protected status as a Salvadoran native the whole time. He was held overnight in Virginia before being released.
Other lawsuits are also challenging collateral arrests, such as an incident in Idaho in which agents with warrants for five people ended up arresting 105 immigrants at a Latino community event in October.
I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me.
– Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, a U.S. citizen arrested while landscaping
“I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me,” said Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, one of the citizens and a North Carolina native, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. He said he was doing landscaping work Nov. 15 when agents pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, then held him in a car before releasing him.
One Illinois case that started in the first Trump administration challenged warrantless arrests and traffic stops used as a pretext for immigration arrests. A 2022 settlement required ICE to document “reasonable suspicion” of illegal status before arresting somebody. The case continues since a judge found in February that the new ICE policy of issuing warrants in real time after a detention violates the consent decree.
Shares of collateral arrests
In the months since August where collateral arrests are now labeled, the District of Columbia and Illinois stand out with high shares of collateral arrests. More than half the arrests in the district were collateral, as were 41% of those in Illinois. There were eight states in which at least 30% of arrests were collateral: Alabama, Maryland, West Virginia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Minnesota.
West Virginia, where there was a “statewide surge” of immigration enforcement in January with state and local cooperation, stands out for its high rate of total arrests as well as a large share of collateral arrests.
For the eight months between August and early March, West Virginia had 1,831 arrests, or 1 in 10 of the state’s noncitizen population as of 2024, the latest data available. That’s by far the largest share in the country, followed by 7% in Wyoming (where truck drivers were targeted for immigration arrests in February) and 4% in Mississippi.
West Virginia Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey, in a statement, cited the cooperation of state and local agencies with ICE through the 287(g) program that assists with immigration enforcement. He praised ICE, saying “they have removed dangerous illegal immigrants from our communities and made our state safer for families and law-abiding citizens.”
Few of those arrested in the surge were violent criminals, however. More than half of those arrested during the surge were collateral arrests, and only 1% — nine immigrants — had a violent crime conviction, according to the Stateline analysis. More than three-quarters, about 500 people, had only an immigration-related violation or crime.
Judges didn’t always agree that collateral arrests and detentions in the West Virginia surge were legal under the U.S. Constitution. U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin, a Clinton appointee, ordered two detainees released in January. He noted that “similar seizures and detentions are occurring frequently across the country” without any evidence they’re necessary as required by the Constitution.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Marimar Martinez, who was shot five times by immigration enforcement agents in Chicago, testifies during a public forum on the violent use of force by Department of Homeland Security agents at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Feb. 3, 2026 in Washington, D.C. She also was a witness at an official congressional hearing on April 22, 2026. (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Nearly all Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee failed to show up for a Wednesday hearing convened by Democrats to highlight President Donald Trump’s aggressive tactics in his mass deportation campaign that have ensnared U.S. citizens.
It marked a rare full committee hearing that Democrats were allowed to conduct because of Minority Day in the House.
Democrats used the opportunity to call witnesses who are U.S. citizens and were harmed, in some cases shot, by federal immigration officers. Lawmakers also focused on two U.S. citizens killed by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Following the deadly shootings in January, Democrats refused to approve any more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which has led to a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security since mid-February.
“Under President Trump, ICE and CBP have killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in cold blood, and shot, beat, harassed, arrested, or locked up countless more innocent people,” the top Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said. “Congress cannot stand idly by while Americans are hurt and killed by their own government.”
Democrats also invited Trump officials tasked with crafting and carrying out the president’s immigration agenda: White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, the border czar.
Neither Miller nor Homan showed up. The White House did not answer questions from States Newsroom regarding Miller or Homan’s absence from the hearing.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson blamed Democrats for keeping “the Department of Homeland Security shuttered, not caring about vital services – like TSA, FEMA, and ICE – going unfunded.”
“Instead of lying about President Trump’s extremely successful deportation operations of criminal illegal aliens, House Democrats should fully reopen the Department of Homeland Security and stop putting illegal aliens before American citizens,”Jackson said.
The chair of the committee, Andrew Garbarino, called Wednesday’s hearing “a distraction from the fact that DHS has been shut down for over 65 days and the security impacts of that (are) real.”
Garbarino, a New York Republican, and the other GOP lawmakers on the committee did not ask any of the witnesses any questions.
Americans under fire
The Americans harmed by federal immigration officials include:
Marimar Martinez, a Chicago preschool worker whom Border Patrol officers shot five times.
Rev. David Black, whom ICE officials shot in the face with pepper-ball rounds while he protested outside an Illinois detention facility.
George Retes Jr., an Army veteran in California whom immigration agents apprehended on his way to work, tear-gassed and kept detained for three days.
Ryan Ecklund, a real estate agent in Minnesota whom federal agents detained after he filmed them while at a grocery store.
DHS shared her photo online, falsely claimed she rammed into Border Patrol with her car and labeled her a domestic terrorist. The Trump administration tried to indict her on federal charges, but eventually dismissed the case against her.
“On Friday I was teaching the young children at the Montessori school and we were singing and dancing and getting ready for spooky season preparing fall activities to do the following week and on Saturday my own government was calling me a ‘domestic terrorist’ and I was in a federal detention center with bullet holes all over my body,” she told the committee. “There were times where I did not believe this was all real and then I would touch my bullet wounds and knew it was certainly real.”
She said she was concerned other people would be shot and killed by federal immigration agents, as Pretti and Good were.
“It’s bound to happen sooner or later if we don’t hold these agents accountable for their actions,” she said.
No apologies
Following the two deadly shootings by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, the leaders of ICE and CBP appeared before the Senate and House committees that have jurisdiction over DHS.
While there, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott and ICE acting head Todd Lyons refused to apologize to the families of Good and Pretti. Lyons has announced he will resign at the end of May, saying he wants to spend more time with his family.
The aggressive immigration deportation campaign in Minneapolis, which has a high Somalian refugee population, also spurred calls from Republicans to push then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign. She stepped down last month after Senate Republicans grilled her over an ad campaign and slow response to providing disaster relief.
The president tapped former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin to steer the department. The Senate last month confirmed Mullin.
One of the witnesses, Retes, said his goal is for Congress to pass legislation in order to hold federal immigration agents accountable.
“Federal officials are basically impossible to sue,” Retes said. “Federal agents basically have immunity.”
He added that he wants Congress to do something, and expressed his frustration that “change doesn’t move fast enough.”
Ecklund criticized federal agents within DHS, and pointed out the irony of the department’s unofficial slogan of going after “the worst of the worst” in conducting immigration enforcement.
“‘Your best’ and the ‘best of DHS’ is the least that the American public deserve,” he said. “You have not given us your best.”
Martinez said agents are not held accountable.
“I’ve been through hell and back,” she said. “These agents — Charles Exum — have not even been held accountable for their actions.”
She added that she doesn’t even know if Exum is still working for CBP.
Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green asked Martinez if she would feel comfortable showing lawmakers where she was shot. She agreed and rolled up her sleeve, showing a dark scar on her upper arm, and pulled up her pants to show another wound across her upper thigh.
“It’s hard to manage all this, to even process what happened,” she said. “Being shot for protecting your community. I want the world to see my pain, my trauma. This is not something to joke about. This is my life.”
Green thanked her and told her that “you deserve justice.”
Minister shot with pepper balls
Black told the committee that he was “horrified by the radical evil being perpetrated by my government.”
He said he was outside a detention facility in Chicago and was in the middle of praying when he was shot by federal agents with pepper balls.
“I am outraged by the blasphemy of those who support brutal ICE and CBP tactics yet call themselves Christians,” he said. “They make a mockery of the sacrifice of God’s love on behalf of the world.
“Yet instead of living into Christ’s rich promise of a Kingdom of peace, freedom, and prosperity, many of those calling themselves Christian are blindly supporting institutions like ICE and CBP, even as they dominate, coerce, and terrorize American communities,” he continued.
The only path forward, he argued to lawmakers, is to dismantle ICE and CBP, and redirect that funding to “support programs that feed the hungry, sate the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, and care for the sick — for in the words of Jesus, ‘just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Democrats will use the unlimited number of amendment votes they are allowed on Republicans’ budget resolution to illustrate policy differences on cost-of-living issues and immigration activities.
“We are for reducing costs for the American people, whether it’s housing or whether it’s health care or whether it’s electric costs or whether it’s groceries or whether it’s child care,” he said. “And they are funding a rogue police force that is not even popular with the American people.”
Republicans voted Tuesday to begin debate on their budget resolution, which holds instructions that would allow the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as well as the Judiciary Committee to each write a bill that spends up to $70 billion on immigration enforcement.
Amendment debate could begin Wednesday or Thursday, followed by a simple majority vote to approve the budget resolution, sending it to the House.
GOP leaders are using the same complex budget reconciliation process they used last year to enact their “big, beautiful” law to approve three years of funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. The earlier bill, enacted last July, included $170 billion to bolster the administration’s immigration activities.
The House and Senate must vote to adopt the budget resolution before they can use the reconciliation process to approve a bill without having to garner 60 votes in the Senate to end debate.
Spending on those two agencies would normally run through the annual Homeland Security government funding bill. But that process stalled earlier this year when Democrats demanded new constraints on immigration activities after federal officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Negotiations between Republicans and Democrats moved rather slowly and contributed to a record-setting shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, which began in mid-February.
President Donald Trump urged GOP lawmakers to vote against any Democratic amendments in a social media post.
“The Radical Left Democrats, and their so-called ‘Leader,’ Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, one of the most incompetent Senators in American History, will try to offer ‘Amendments’ during this process to divide Republicans,” he wrote. “Republicans must stick together and UNIFY to get this done, and to keep America safe — something which the Democrats don’t care about. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
‘Glaring contrast’ to be highlighted
Democrats said during their press conference they plan to use the marathon amendment voting session on the budget resolution that sets up the reconciliation process to force Republicans to take votes on several issues.
“We are ready with our amendments to show the glaring contrast between the parties in terms of who’s for reducing your costs and who’s not,” Schumer said.
Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said that instead of working on legislation to bring down costs for everyday Americans, Republicans in Congress are focused on providing tens of billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement.
“Gas prices have surged. Health care premiums have doubled or tripled, or worse, pricing millions out of their coverage. So what are Republicans doing about all of that? Nothing,” she said. “Their urgent top priority this week is shoveling at least $70 billion at ICE and Border Patrol with zero accountability, zero reforms and zero strings attached.”
Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said Republicans are sending a clear message about their policy goals and priorities by using the reconciliation process to provide the administration with another significant boost for immigration and deportation activities.
“When you’re in the majority in the Senate, you get limited opportunities to use this unusual tool of reconciliation — once, maybe twice, in a year,” he said. “And so it’s pretty significant that using this tool, they have decided to do exactly nothing about the cost of living.”
Klobuchar decries $70 billion for immigration enforcement
Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said that $70 billion in federal spending could go toward addressing many of the other challenges facing the country.
Instead of giving it to ICE and the Border Patrol, she said, Congress could bolster the number of local police officers, or help people afford the cost of their health insurance premiums, or have Medicare cover dental and vision and hearing care, or build hundreds of thousands of new homes, or help lower the cost of child care for millions.
Republicans, she said, also know there is a need to place limits on federal immigration agents after events like those in her home state and throughout the country.
“They know there are serious problems. Why? A number of them joined with us at that Judiciary hearing to call for Kristi Noem to leave,” Klobuchar said, referring to the early March hearing that took place just days before the former DHS secretary was removed. “They asked just as tough questions, some of them, as we did.”
ICE agents search the passenger of a truck as they arrest both him and the driver during a traffic stop on Feb. 11, 2026 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in Congress appeared to be on the same page Tuesday about how to fund immigration activities for the next three years as they released a party-line measure that will pave the way for a special process known as budget reconciliation.
But they weren’t unified about another problem — when to clear a bipartisan funding bill for the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security that would end a shutdown that’s been underway since mid-February.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a morning press conference he wanted to make sure funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol isn’t left behind and that’s why he’s held back a Senate-passed bill that would fund most of the shuttered DHS programs.
“There’s some concern on our side that if you do the bulk of the department first before that, then they could be left out. We can’t allow for that,” Johnson said. “So we’re working through that. The sequencing is important.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he “had heard” the House may approve the regular DHS funding bill once the Senate approved the new GOP budget resolution, which it could do as soon as this week. That appeared to be a contrast to the plans Johnson laid out.
Both chambers of Congress must adopt a budget resolution in order to unlock the complex budget reconciliation process they hope to use to fund ICE and the Border Patrol for the next three years.
“I don’t think that DHS has the money to fund all those agencies for that long,” Thune said, referring to the Trump administration’s move to pay employees from the GOP’s “big, beautiful” law during the shutdown. “But that’s, I guess, a question, you know, they’ll have to answer.”
White House officials, he added, have been pressing for the House to clear the Senate-passed DHS funding bill that would officially end the shutdown and ensure consistent paychecks for employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration.
Thune said it will take the Senate a while to move the actual reconciliation bill across the floor, which can only happen after both chambers agree to a budget resolution.
“I think there’s a certain time, as you all know, that it takes to get reconciliation across the floor here,” he said. “And I think there is a limited amount of time in which they can continue to fund the various agencies that aren’t currently funded.”
$70 billion
Senate Republicans released a budget resolution later in the morning that would give the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee the ability to write a bill that spends up to $70 billion on immigration enforcement and provides the same limit to the Judiciary Committee.
Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote in a statement the budget resolution instructs those two committees “to create a reconciliation bill that fully funds Border Patrol and ICE for 3.5 years, which will carry us through the Trump presidency.”
Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement of his own that “Republicans are hellbent on passing another bill to provide even more funds to ICE and (Customs and Border Protection) — agencies that were already funded at multiple times their former budget last year!”
“In addition, Republicans rejected any commonsense reforms for these agencies such as wearing identification or getting a warrant before breaking into homes,” Merkley added. “Instead, the Republican plan is more money for more secret police tactics that are terrorizing communities across America.”
Democrats began pressing for guardrails on immigration officers after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
Vote-a-rama to press GOP
The Senate voted 52-46 in the afternoon to proceed with the budget resolution, setting up a final passage vote later this week.
That Senate process requires a marathon amendment voting session, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a floor speech the party will use to question Republicans’ legislative priorities.
“Americans want to know why Republicans aren’t fighting to lower their gas, health care, grocery and housing costs,” he said. “During reconciliation, Democrats are going to make sure this majority answers to the American people.”
The amendment votes won’t be just about policy, especially with Democrats looking to regain control of the Senate during this November’s midterm elections.
The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter categorizes Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ and Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s reelection bids as “toss-up” races, making them the most at-risk members of their party.
Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan’s race is rated as “lean Republican,” making him more vulnerable than many of his colleagues seeking reelection.
Democrats running to unseat those three GOP senators could use their votes on certain amendments in campaign advertisements or debates later this year.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detain an observer after making arrests in January in Minneapolis. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are once again looking toward the complex budget reconciliation process as a way to achieve some of their policy goals without Democratic votes.
GOP leaders were able to use the special pathway last year to approve the “big, beautiful” law that extended tax cuts, overhauled and cut Medicaid, provided hundreds of billions in extra funding for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and raised the country’s debt limit by $5 trillion, among other provisions.
Now, Republicans will try to use the process at least one more time to provide years of funding to the Department of Homeland Security amid a two-month shutdown, with none of the constraints on immigration enforcement that Democrats have sought.
Democrats’ push to rein in enforcement after federal immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis led to a record-breaking stalemate over the annual DHS appropriations bill.
The funding lapse hasn’t yet affected Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, DHS agencies which Republicans bolstered in the last reconciliation bill. But it has had an impact on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration.
Reconciliation will require Republicans in the House and Senate to be almost completely unified on their goals, especially if the party tries to include elements of a hot-button voter identification bill called the SAVE America Act or other policies that don’t have a significant impact on federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit.
What goes in and what is kept out of another reconciliation package will become increasingly important to GOP leaders’ reelection message as the country moves closer to November’s midterm elections.
Why use budget reconciliation?
Regular bills need a simple majority vote to pass the House, but at least 60 senators need to vote to end debate in that chamber. This step, sometimes called the legislative filibuster, or cloture, forces bipartisanship on most legislation, unless it moves through the reconciliation process.
Budget reconciliation bills are exempt from that Senate rule.
So why haven’t Republicans used reconciliation to enact all of their policy goals and campaign promises since taking over unified control last year?
Budget reconciliation bills must follow a specific process and meet strict requirements in the Senate, known as the Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd.
Very simply, this requires reconciliation bills to address federal spending, revenue, or debt in a way that is not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian.
How complicated could reconciliation really be?
Very.
First, the House and Senate must adopt a budget resolution with identical sets of reconciliation instructions for committees. Those guidelines will give committee leaders either a minimum amount to spend during the next decade or a maximum amount they can add to the deficit during that window.
The Senate cannot approve the budget resolution without going through a marathon amendment voting session referred to as a vote-a-rama, which typically lasts well into the night.
A budget resolution is a tax and spending blueprint, sort of like a blueprint for building a house before you’ve actually gotten a mortgage or purchased any land. It’s a proposal, but it doesn’t actually change tax law or spend any money.
Once the budget is adopted, the House committees that receive reconciliation instructions must draft, debate and vote to send their bill to the Budget Committee.
Then, the Budget Committee bundles all of the reconciliation bills together in one package and sends it to the House floor, where lawmakers must vote to send it to the Senate, where things get even more complex.
What happens next?
Before a reconciliation bill goes to the Senate floor, it moves through something referred to as the “Byrd bath,” where the Senate parliamentarian determines if each provision fits the strict rules.
Senate leaders can take up the House-passed version of the bill or work through the committee process on their side of the Capitol. Typically, the upper chamber goes directly to the floor and amends the House-passed bill.
The Senate then goes through another vote-a-rama session, giving the minority party, currently Democrats, the chance to put all 100 lawmakers in that chamber on the record about various proposals in the bill.
That process will be especially challenging this year, with Democrats looking to institute guardrails on immigration enforcement activities and get Republicans up for reelection on the record over some of the most pressing issues facing the country.
If the Senate makes any changes to the House-passed bill, it must go back to that chamber for final approval before it can go to President Donald Trump for his signature.
If the Senate approves a bill identical to the one passed by the House, it would go to Trump without needing another House vote.
What exactly is the Byrd rule?
Elements in the bill would violate that rule if they:
Didn’t change revenue, spending, or the debt limit.
Change revenue or spending in a way deemed “merely incidental.”
Change policy outside the jurisdiction of the authorizing committee.
Didn’t comply with the committee’s reconciliation instructions in the budget resolution.
Increases the deficit past the budget window (usually 10 years).
Change Social Security in any way, shape, or form.
How many times can Republicans use reconciliation? Is it unlimited?
They have two more chances during this Congress but are limited by how many budget resolutions they can adopt.
GOP leaders used the fiscal 2025 budget resolution to set up passage of the “big, beautiful” law. They can write a fiscal 2026 budget resolution for one more round and then use the fiscal 2027 budget resolution to run through a third reconciliation process, if they want to.
Fiscal years for the federal government begin on Oct. 1.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in December 2025. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump lashed out at Pope Leo XIV Sunday night following the pontiff’s sharp criticism of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and wider Middle East conflict.
In a lengthy post, littered with falsehoods, on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump accused the first U.S.-born pope of being “WEAK on crime” and of supporting Iran having a nuclear weapon. The president also invoked the 70-year-old pontiff’s brother, Louis Prevost, “because Louis is all MAGA.”
Leo, born Robert Prevost, is from Chicago.
During a flight to Algeria on Monday, Leo told reporters, “I have no fear of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do.”
“We are not politicians,” he said, as reported by Vatican media. “We don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective he might understand it, but I do believe in the message of the Gospel, as a peacemaker.”
List of complaints
Trump’s Sunday night post criticized Leo for not backing his foreign policy and aggressive immigration agenda, and generally for not being more supportive of his administration.
The United States and Israel ordered military strikes on Iran in late February, despite not facing an imminent threat from the Islamic state. Trump did not give a clear rationale for the strikes until about a month after they launched, saying they were meant to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.
“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country,” Trump posted just after 9 p.m. Eastern.
“And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History,” the president continued in his 334-word message about the pontiff.
Further, Trump claimed Leo should be “thankful” because Trump is responsible for the Chicago native being installed as the leader of the Roman Catholic church.
“He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican,” he wrote.
A screenshot of Trump’s now-deleted post.
Less than an hour later, the president posted an artificial intelligence-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ blessing an ailing man as what appear to be angels in full military fatigues hover in the clouds above with fighter jets nearby. Trump deleted the post Monday morning.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
While speaking to reporters outside the Oval Office Monday afternoon, Trump said he posted the image but that he wasn’t depicted as Jesus. Rather, he said, he was supposed to represent a doctor associated with the Red Cross.
“I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor, and had to do with Red Cross as a Red Cross worker there, which we support, and only the fake news could come up with that one,” he said in response to a question about the image.
“So I just heard about it, and I said, ‘how do they come up with that?’ It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better, I make people a lot better,” he continued.
One minute after the post depicting Jesus, the president posted an AI-generated image of a skyscraper bearing his name on the moon’s surface.
Iran talks crumble
In the hours prior to sounding off on the pope, Trump posted a video of himself shaking hands with mixed martial artist Paul Costa following an Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended in Miami on Saturday night.
At the time of the fight, Vice President JD Vance was wrapping up failed peace talks with Iranian leaders in Pakistan. U.S. and Iranian leaders reached a two-week ceasefire deal last week. Trump described it at the time as a major step toward a permanent peace deal.
Trump threatened to establish a U.S. military blockade in the Strait of Hormuz Monday after talks collapsed. Not long after the war began, Iran effectively closed the narrow maritime passageway that moves one-fifth of the world’s oil.
Vance, whose forthcoming book focuses on his conversion to Catholicism, was one of the last guests to visit Pope Francis before his death nearly one year ago.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement Sunday night disapproving of Trump’s social media post about the pontiff.
“I am disheartened that the President chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father,” said Coakley, the archbishop of Oklahoma City. “Pope Leo is not his rival; nor is the Pope a politician. He is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s post “viciously attacked” Leo’s opposition to the Iran war. Trump’s comments that the pope is “weak on crime,” among other claims, reached “a new low,” the New York Democrat added.
Schumer also said the president’s AI-generated image of himself depicted as Christ “makes a mockery of millions of Christian Americans, many of whom voted for Trump and who fervently believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.”
“If King Herod had a Truth Social account in the first century, I think he’d probably describe Jesus Christ, who saved the penitent thief crucified alongside him, as weak on crime,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
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