Thune plans to suspend oversight of ICE for 3 years [View all]

Senate Republicans Have a Plan to Suspend Congressional Oversight of ICE for Trump’s Whole Term talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/senate-...

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2026-04-23T14:44:21.809Z

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Do not let Thune’s description fool you. The plan hatched by Senate and House Republicans, backed by President Trump, to ram a bad if not pestilential bill through by wielding the mighty budget process is a virtual coup. That budget reconciliation, which is not intended to be used for several years of controversial appropriating, allows the Senate to pass legislation with a simple, 51-vote majority. Republicans will be able to pass what they want without any Democratic support, and with few opportunities for Democratic opposition. The process brooks little scrutiny or challenge. It strikes like lightning and steamrolls over democracy’s opposition.

The DHS reconciliation bill, Republican leadership has said, will go far beyond the expected year’s funding for ICE. As a result, it will cloak ICE from congressional reform for three years — not one, but three, explicitly for Trump’s whole term — armoring officers against any future attempts, by, say, a Democratic House after January, to deal with its abuses. The legislation, as described, would swell two immigration police machines, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), to a combined size more than double that of any other federal police force. It would launch a massive, cruel empire of detention and deportation to catch and imprison hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of almost entirely innocuous and helpless people. If congressional Democrats — and hopefully a few Republicans — are going to do their best to wage a battle against this, then, given the forced pace of the budget process, there is no time to lose.
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Trump’s allies have fueled debate about whether Trump would send ICE agents to the polls during the next election. Recently the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, discussed doing so. He told the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 28 that he couldn’t understand why anyone would disagree with a president deploying federal agents to the polls. That is a subject beyond this article, but whatever Trump’s political calculations, just thinking about the practical realities, with this bill, Trump will have enough masked and armed ICE agents and overtime pay for all the unwelcome deployments he wants.

More:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/senate-republicans-have-a-plan-to-suspend-congressional-oversight-of-ice-for-trumps-whole-term