The Vote

The Senate passed the $70 billion immigration enforcement bill in the predawn hours of Friday, June 5, after an exhausting marathon of votes that stretched through Thursday and into early Friday morning.

Every Democrat voted no. Every Republican voted yes — except Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who broke ranks.

One Republican dissent out of the entire Senate caucus.

What Almost Killed It

According to The New York Times, Republican leaders spent weeks putting down an internal revolt before the final vote. Several GOP senators pushed amendments to strip out or modify provisions. Every single one of those amendments failed.

The divisions, the Times reports, stemmed from a growing recognition that Trump's personal agenda is "diverging sharply from his party's political interests." Some Republicans looked at this bill and saw political risk they couldn't publicly oppose.

They voted for it anyway.

Follow the Money

The headline number is $70 billion. The bulk of it goes to what was advertised: funding ICE, Border Patrol, and the deportation infrastructure that has been the centerpiece of Trump's second term.

But buried in the legislation are line items that have nothing to do with the border.

$1.8 billion for an "Anti-Weaponization Fund" — a pool of money to compensate people who claim the federal government wrongly targeted them. As Reason noted, this sounds reasonable in theory. In practice, it reads as a payout mechanism for Trump allies, some of whom have legitimate grievances, many of whom do not. There is no neutral arbiter built in. The administration decides who qualifies.

$1 billion in security funding tied to Trump's ballroom construction project. A personal real estate development. Funded by American taxpayers. In a border security bill.

The Civil Liberties Problem

Mainstream coverage — both left and right — has largely focused on the politics of the vote. The right emphasizes border security wins. The left emphasizes the cruelty of mass deportation.

Both are leaving aside the documented record of what's already happening on the ground.

Ilya Somin, writing at The Volokh Conspiracy, documented the situation: since Trump returned to office in January 2025, ICE and other federal officers have killed at least three U.S. citizens — two in Minnesota, one in Texas — wounded numerous others, and illegally detained hundreds more after mistaking them for undocumented immigrants.

ProPublica identified approximately 170 cases of illegal detention of American citizens through October 2025. Somin calls that a "severe underestimate."

Congress is cutting a $70 billion check for more of the same — with ZERO additional accountability provisions attached.

The Death Toll in Detention

Since the start of fiscal year 2026 in October, 29 people have died in ICE detention. The fiscal year isn't even over yet. That's a record pace.

overcrowding. Inadequate food. Denial of medical treatment. These are documented conditions reported by multiple outlets across the political spectrum.

This bill doesn't fix any of that. It funds more capacity with the same broken oversight.

What the Right Is Getting Wrong

Conservatives who support aggressive enforcement are right that the border has been a genuine crisis and that the political class ignored it for decades. That case is solid.

But a $1 billion line item for a presidential ballroom is not border security. A $1.8 billion fund with no neutral oversight that will likely flow to political allies is not justice. And funding an operation that has already killed three American citizens without a single structural reform is not law and order.

This is a spending bill with a border security wrapper.

What the Left Is Getting Wrong

Democrats opposing this bill are on solid ground on the civil liberties concerns and the pork. They are on much weaker ground pretending the underlying border situation doesn't require serious enforcement action.

Uniform opposition to everything isn't a policy.

What This Means for Regular People

American taxpayers just had $70 billion committed in their name — in the middle of the night, after a week of backroom arm-twisting.

Some of that money will secure the border. Some of it will fund an operation that has already illegally detained hundreds of U.S. citizens. Some of it will pay out Trump allies. And $1 billion of it will go toward security at a private ballroom.

That last part alone should disqualify this bill from being called a border security bill. It is a massive spending package that happens to include border enforcement, wrapped in language designed to make it unsinkable.

Fiscal responsibility and border security are both legitimate goals. This bill uses one to smuggle the other — and throws in a personal favor to the president while nobody was watching.