The latest fight over immigration is happening in the driest possible corner of Washington: the budget process. On April 23, Senate Republicans voted 50-48 to advance a budget resolution that would pave the way for roughly $70 billion in additional funding for ICE and Border Patrol over the next three years, while moving the measure to the House and setting up a possible reconciliation push that would let Republicans bypass a Democratic filibuster. The money is also tied to ending the partial Department of Homeland Security shutdown that has dragged on since mid-February, which has turned immigration enforcement into the price of reopening a major federal department.
That procedural twist is part of the point. Donald Trump’s immigration politics have always relied on turning policy into spectacle and spectacle into leverage. Immigration was one of the issues that helped power his return to the White House in 2024, and Reuters reported both immediately after the election and again in January that voters saw immigration as one of the defining issues of the race and one of the main tasks awaiting the new administration. Trump’s promise was not merely tighter border control. It was visible force, constant motion, and a message that the federal government would again act as if immigration enforcement were a national emergency rather than an administrative function.
Once back in office, the administration set about building that machinery. Reuters reported in February that Trump’s broader immigration package had already delivered about $170 billion for border security and immigration enforcement through September 2029, helping drive ICE detention levels above 68,000 and giving the agency capacity to hold more than 100,000 people at a time. That is the sort of figure that can start to feel abstract until one compares it with something more familiar. France’s defense ministry says French defense spending for 2025 is expected to reach 2.07% of GDP, placing it in roughly the same broad range as the annual total now being discussed for the latest American immigration-enforcement buildup. Congress is not just topping up an agency. It is funding an apparatus at a scale that begins to invite comparisons with the military budgets of major states.
That expansion has not come without political cost. In Minnesota, the administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” became the clearest example of how hardline enforcement can curdle into backlash. The crackdown ended after thousands of arrests, mass protests, and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens. The operation serves as a warning sign for Republicans heading into the midterms - the same immigration politics that helped return Trump to office have started to produce unease once voters were confronted with masked raids, civilian deaths, and stories of apparent overreach. Those events gave Democrats a sharp new line of attack and helped explain why demands for oversight have become central to the current Senate fight.
That is the immediate backdrop to the current shutdown standoff. Republicans want to use the budget resolution to unlock reconciliation legislation and lock in more money for ICE and Border Patrol without needing Democratic votes in the Senate. Democrats have argued that Congress should not write another giant check to federal enforcement agencies without tighter controls, more transparency, and clearer accountability after the Minnesota shootings. The Senate vote shows Republicans have a real path, but not a frictionless one: the House still has to act, and the eventual implementing legislation will still have to survive the political and procedural hazards of reconciliation.
If Washington is fighting over how large the immigration-enforcement machine should become, the states are fighting over whether they want to help operate it.
The map below shows ICE-related legislation in current sessions around the country. Click a state for more information, and click 'Detail' to read the bill.
The Democratic side of that story is remarkably consistent. Blue-state bills generally seek to narrow cooperation with ICE, limit detainees and transfers, block or terminate 287(g) agreements, protect sensitive locations, and reduce the collection or disclosure of immigration-status information. Maryland’s SB 791 and HB 1575, both versions of the Community Trust Act, fit that model squarely, as do SB 245 and HB 444, which target immigration-enforcement agreements. Massachusetts moves along the same lines with H 5305, H 5316, and H 2575, all part of a broader effort to define how far state and local authorities may go in assisting federal immigration enforcement. Colorado’s HB 1276 adds a slightly different twist, using reporting rules, privacy protections, and restrictions on deportation transport to make cooperation harder, more visible, and more legally fraught.
Delaware’s legislation shows how that approach can harden into durable policy. HB 182, which has already been signed into law, prohibits law-enforcement agencies from entering into or renewing 287(g) agreements, while HB 58 limits arrests and detention connected to civil immigration enforcement. 287(g) is the federal program that allows state and local law-enforcement agencies to partner with ICE and carry out certain immigration-enforcement functions. Arizona’s Democratic bills point in the same direction from a more politically difficult state: HB 2657 would bar law-enforcement agencies from entering into or renewing 287(g)-style agreements, while SB 1342, the Immigrant Trust Act, would prohibit a wide range of immigration-status inquiries and civil-immigration holds. In all of these bills, the underlying theory is similar. Democratic lawmakers are treating proximity to ICE as a civil-liberties problem and trying to close the legal pathways through which local institutions can quietly become federal immigration subcontractors.
Republican-sponsored bills point in the opposite direction just as clearly. These measures are far more likely to mandate cooperation, punish sanctuary policies, preserve or expand 287(g), require notification or transfer to ICE, or otherwise make state and local agencies more useful to federal enforcement. Mississippi’s HB 538, already enacted, bars sanctuary-style policies. Tennessee’s HB 6001, SB 6002, and SB 0006 all sit on the same side of the divide, strengthening the expectation of state cooperation with federal authorities. West Virginia’s SB 615 would require law-enforcement agencies to notify and cooperate with ICE, while HB 5477 would mandate participation in the federal 287(g) program. California Republican bill AB 85, though dead, would have required broader local cooperation with immigration authorities in felony cases. Illinois Republicans, meanwhile, filed a whole cluster of bills — including HB 4129, SB 1202, SB 1203, SB 1313, SB 3115, SB 3117, and SB 3131 — aimed at rolling back or narrowing Illinois’s existing limits on state cooperation.
Minnesota is the most revealing state because it contains both sides of the argument at once. Democratic bills such as HF 3413, SF 3842, HF 3924, and SF 4992 seek to limit state and local involvement in federal civil immigration enforcement. Republicans in the same state have responded with HF 16 and SF 643, measures aimed at blocking local noncooperation policies. Minnesota, in other words, is not just where the federal crackdown went politically wrong. It is also where the legislative aftershocks are easiest to see: one party trying to put more distance between state institutions and ICE, the other trying to make sure no such distance exists.
That partisan pattern is the clearest trend running through the state data. Democratic bills are usually framed around trust, schools, hospitals, due process, privacy, and limits on deputizing local officials for federal civil immigration work. Republican bills are usually framed around public safety, compulsory cooperation, anti-sanctuary enforcement, and the idea that states should not obstruct federal immigration law. There are exceptions and hybrids around the edges, but the larger division is stark. One side is writing bills to close doors. The other is writing bills to force them open.
Congressional bills show the same divide, just with brighter lights and a bigger megaphone. Republican proposals such as H.R. 756, the 287(g) Program Protection Act, H.R. 7423, the No Sanctuary Cities Act of 2026, H.R. 7612, the End Sanctuary Cities Act of 2026, and H.R. 7640, the Shut Down Sanctuary Policies Act of 2026, all aim to push states and cities more firmly into ICE’s orbit. Democratic bills head the other way. H.R. 6521, the Immigration Court Due Process Protection Act of 2025, would curb arrests around immigration courts and check-ins, while H.R. 6890, the PROTECT Immigration Act of 2025, would scrap the 287(g) program entirely. Even in Congress, then, the fight is no longer just about “border security.” It is about whether immigration enforcement should spread outward through local partnerships or be pulled back behind stricter federal limits.
What happens next depends partly on procedure and partly on politics. On procedure, Republicans have a plausible path. The Senate vote shows they can keep the budget vehicle alive, and reconciliation exists precisely to move fiscal legislation without requiring 60 votes. That makes some further ICE and Border Patrol funding more likely than not. The harder question is whether House Republicans can stay unified, whether the final package can survive reconciliation rules, and whether swing-district Republicans decide there is a political ceiling to how visibly they want to own an enforcement expansion after Minnesota.
On politics, the picture is more complicated than it looked a few months ago. Recent polling suggests that support for Trump’s broader deportation push has softened, particularly among independents. That does not mean Republicans suddenly lose the issue; voters still broadly favor stronger border enforcement. But it does suggest a growing distinction between support for enforcement in principle and discomfort with the administration’s tactics in practice. That is an awkward gap for Republicans to carry into the midterms, especially if Democrats can turn immigration from a border-security issue into an accountability issue.
The likeliest outcome, then, is not a clean national verdict but a deepening federal-state split. Congress will probably keep trying to move more money to ICE and Border Patrol, whether through the current shutdown fight or the reconciliation process that may follow it. Democratic-led states will keep trying to narrow the legal channels through which that money can be translated into local action. Republican-led states will keep widening those channels, sometimes by requiring cooperation and sometimes by punishing jurisdictions that refuse. The next phase of immigration politics is therefore not just about the southern border or deportation totals. It is about federalism. Washington can fund the machine. The states are deciding whether to supply the gears.
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