Rick Scott joins House conservatives in panning Senate Homeland Security funding deal

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), one of President Trump’s closest Senate allies, said Friday he opposed passing a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill in the early hours of the night while most of America slept.

“The morning, the Senate passed a bill to fund many functions of the Department of Homeland Security, but it did not fund ICE and only partially funded CBP. I opposed this bill,” Scott said in a statement.

“The Democrats have made clear to the American people that they will always put illegal aliens first,” he added.

Scott joined members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus in panning the late-night deal struck in the Senate to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. The measure passed the upper chamber by unanimous consent.

Members of the Freedom Caucus say they want a bill that would include new voter ID requirements and fund Border Patrol and the transnational criminal investigative division of ICE.

“We can’t believe that the Senate abdicated its responsibility this morning of not funding the child sex trafficking division of ICE, that they don’t didn’t fund the Border Patrol. I guess the Democrats want a wide open border,” House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said Friday.



“The only thing we’re going to support is adding that funding into the bill, adding voter ID, sending it back to the Senate, make them come back in and do their work. The bottom line is, this deal is bad for America,” he said.

The strong pushback from the Freedom Caucus raises questions about whether the Senate-approved bill can pass the lower chamber. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday rejected the bill and instead proposed a 60-day funding stopgap.

Other Senate conservatives have criticized passing legislation that cuts funding from ICE’s annual discretionary budget.

“I’m skeptical about voting to defund or to cut ICE funding,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters earlier this week.

“I would hope that we’re not going to be asked to do that. I do not want to vote to defund ICE. I don’t want to vote to cut ICE funding. I want ICE to be fully funded,”

Emily Brooks contributed.

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