Analysis

In October of 2023 President Biden presented Congress with a $106 billion supplemental funding request which included an additional $5.3 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and $2.5 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as military aid to Israel for its genocidal war in Gaza and aid to Ukraine and Taiwan. For the past several months, Congress has been negotiating the President’s request, using immigrant communities as political pawns in the process.

Although the request already included billions of dollars in additional funding for border militarization, Republicans demanded that passage of the supplemental come with harsh immigration policies like those passed by the House last year in House Resolution 2 (HR2). As negotiations continued, President Biden and top Senate Democrats agreed to make significant and disastrous concessions that would be immensely harmful to immigrant communities in the U.S. and to those seeking to migrate here. The changes would not only gut the asylum system but would lead to more immigration detention and interior enforcement.

On February 4, 2024 the Senate released text of a proposed bill, the “Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024,” that provides Biden with $118 billion and includes numerous cruel and dangerous anti-immigrant provisions that will gravely impact people’s ability to seek safety and opportunity in the U.S. ICE and CBP already operate at astronomical levels, using their combined budget of more than $25 billion to detain and deport people away from their loved ones, safety and opportunity. This bill infuses these agencies with an additional $13.6 billion.

If passed, this bill will be devastating for immigrant communities, making it all but impossible for people to obtain asylum in the U.S. and putting immigrants already here at heightened risk of detention and deportation. Even if the bill fails, the conversations surrounding it have intensified the already toxic rhetoric around immigration and the border, and will impact the starting point of future negotiations.