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WASHINGTON — <\/span>The Senate is beginning a long series of votes Thursday on legislation to fund President Donald Trump\u2019s immigration enforcement agencies, moving toward passage of a three-year fix as Democrats have blocked the money for months in protest. <\/p>\n The roughly $70 billion bill to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol would end the blockade by Democrats who demanded policy changes<\/a> after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents in January. The bill would fund the agencies for three years, through the end of Trump\u2019s term. <\/p>\n First, though, Republicans must beat back a potential gauntlet of amendments that Democrats plan to offer, including to try and permanently ban Trump’s $1.776 billion settlement fund<\/a> for allies who he believes have been politically persecuted. Democrats have said their first amendment Thursday morning will be to eliminate the fund and send the immigration spending bill back to committee. <\/p>\n Senate Republicans are using a complicated procedural maneuver<\/a> to get around the filibuster and pass the budget legislation with no Democratic votes. But it has taken weeks to get the bill to the Senate floor as Republicans navigated various obstacles to passage created by Trump and the White House \u2014 including a $1 billion proposal for White House security that they eventually scrapped and fierce bipartisan backlash to the settlement fund. <\/p>\n \u201cThe thing we\u2019re trying to do here is to keep the focus on funding for ICE and CBP,\u201d Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday evening, after the Senate voted to start debating the legislation. \u201cThis was narrow and targeted from the very beginning and clean, and we\u2019re trying to maintain it that way.\u201d <\/p>\n But it’s unclear if Republicans will have enough votes to fend off the Democratic amendments. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said this week that the fund would not move forward<\/a>, and many GOP senators said Wednesday that they were satisfied with his remarks. <\/p>\n Yet Trump, who has been at odds with Senate Republicans in recent weeks, raised new doubts about the settlement\u2019s future on Wednesday afternoon when he told reporters that the settlement is \u201cvery important\u201d and said \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d whether it is dead or on hold.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d have to ask the lawyers,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n To pass legislation through the budget process called reconciliation, the Senate must first hold a long series of votes. Democrats are using that process to try and ban the settlement by law \u2014 and also kill the immigration spending bill. <\/p>\n After Trump\u2019s comments about the fund, Schumer posted on X that \u201cthis is EXACTLY why\u201d Democrats would be forcing votes to ban it.<\/p>\n Some Republicans also planned to try and put Blanche\u2019s promise in writing. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has said he will offer an amendment to block any attempt at resurrecting the fund.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got a sufficient number of Republicans who have been very clear they\u2019ve got concerns there,\u201d said Tillis.<\/p>\n Democrats say any funding bill for the Homeland Security Department should place restraints on federal immigration authorities<\/a>, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.<\/p>\n After federal agents shot Renee Good<\/a> and Alex Pretti<\/a> in Minneapolis, Trump agreed to a Democratic request<\/a> that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations went nowhere, and the DHS funding lapsed in mid-February with no agreement on changes to the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement tactics.<\/p>\n Congress eventually funded the rest of the Homeland Security Department at the end of April with Democratic support. But ICE and Border Patrol remained without regular funding, and Republicans launched a new effort to pass three years of funding for those agencies with no Democratic votes. <\/p>\n Work on the legislation was also delayed by Republican opposition to $1 billion in security funding<\/a> for the White House, including for Trump\u2019s new ballroom<\/a>, that was added to the original bill. <\/p>\n