The House of Representatives Thursday passed President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” securing billions more in funding for immigration enforcement.
House lawmakers voted 218 to 214 to send the tax and immigration bill to Trump’s desk, with only two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, joining Democrats in opposition of the bill. Border hawk groups and other immigration enforcement leaders celebrated the Big, Beautiful Bill’s passage, as it dramatically ramps up funding for border and interior immigration enforcement.
“During the previous four years, the American public endured record levels of illegal immigration, record costs and immeasurable damage to the security and well-being of the nation,” Joe Chatham, director of government relations for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a public statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The legislation passed by Congress today is critical to ensuring that our borders will remain secure beyond the current administration and that the millions of illegal aliens now in the country will be removed.”
“Notably, Congress approved more than $60 billion in spending on border security infrastructure – providing for completion of the border wall and electronic equipment to detect the entry of illegal aliens and contraband, and additional Customs and Border Protection manpower and facilities to arrest and detain those who enter illegally,” Chatham added.
The bill allocates more than $46 billion to wall construction and border barrier systems, according to the House Homeland Security Committee. This funding includes 701 miles of primary wall, 900 miles of river barriers and nearly 630 mules of secondary barriers, in addition to replacing more than 140 miles of pedestrian and vehicle barriers.
The legislation will also fund 5,000 new Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, 3,000 new Border Patrol agents and 200 new Air and Marine Operations agents, according to the committee.
This boost in border funding appears at a time when the Trump administration has made historical progress on securing the border already.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the lowest nationwide encounters and apprehensions of migrants in history Wednesday. CBP reported just 25,243 nationwide encounters for the entire month of June, the lowest number of nationwide encounters in the agency’s history. This milestone was reached shortly after the administration announced that not a single illegal migrant was released into the U.S. in May — a dramatic improvement from the 62,000 illegal migrants released into the country in May 2024.
Not all were happy about the immigration provisions included in the bill. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that, if passed, the Big, Beautiful Bill would “unleash” a “deportation machine” on steroids.
In contrast, the acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) celebrated the “unprecedented” funding the bill bestows onto his agency.
“I speak on behalf of the entire agency when I say that ICE is grateful to President Trump for putting in the hard work necessary to get the Big Beautiful Bill across the finish line — but the real win is for the American people,” ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said Thursday.
“The unprecedented funding for ICE will enable my hard-working officers and agents to continue making America safe again by identifying, arresting and removing criminal aliens from our communities,” Lyons continued.
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