Senate Parliamentarian Strikes $1 Billion for White House 'Security' Tucked Into an ICE Funding Bill

The Senate parliamentarian ruled on May 17 that $1 billion in White House security funding could not ride on a roughly $72 billion budget-reconciliation package funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through the end of Trump's term. Reconciliation bills bypass the filibuster but are limited to provisions with a direct budgetary purpose, and the parliamentarian found the security money too broad and complex to qualify. The provision was tied to "hardening" work connected to the president's new East Wing ballroom, which the White House has said is privately funded; the Secret Service had earlier told reporters the ballroom-related figure was $220 million rather than $1 billion.

The episode tests how far the reconciliation vehicle can be stretched. Attaching construction-adjacent money for a presidential project to an immigration-enforcement bill would have moved it on a simple majority, without the 60-vote threshold that ordinarily applies, and would have shifted costs of a privately branded project onto taxpayers.

Majority Leader John Thune's office signaled Republicans would try again — "Redraft. Refine. Resubmit" — and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed the ruling as a win. Senate Republicans stripped the money from the immigration bill in early June.