US Senate passes budget seeking to curb Trump's immigration policies
The U.S. Senate passed a government funding package in a 71-29 vote, clearing the way for Congress and the White House to renegotiate the full-year budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The funding measure also aims to restrict the hardline immigration policies of President Trump.
The bill now moves to the House of Representatives for consideration. The House is not scheduled to reconvene in Washington until next Monday.
Saigon Sentinel Analysis
The Senate’s decisive 71-29 vote to pass the latest budget package signals a potent bipartisan alignment, comfortably exceeding the minimum threshold required for passage. The lopsided margin underscores a growing consensus among a significant bloc of Republicans who share Democratic anxieties regarding budget volatility at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the administration’s immigration protocols.
This move is less a final settlement than a strategic opening, designed to create leverage for the high-stakes negotiations ahead between Capitol Hill and the Trump White House. At its core, the standoff represents a classic constitutional friction: the legislative branch’s "power of the purse" versus the executive’s mandate to implement policy.
For the Trump administration, this serves as a direct legislative challenge to a pillar of its domestic agenda. The eventual compromise will dictate the operational scope and intensity of immigration enforcement through fiscal year 2026, reaffirming that congressional oversight remains a formidable counterweight to even the most assertive executive branch.
Impact on Vietnamese Americans
The Trump administration’s hardline immigration stance strikes at the very heart of the Vietnamese-American community. Any tightening of DHS regulations could lead to grueling wait times and lower approval rates for family-based visa categories like the F2B, which so many families in Little Saigon rely on to bring their loved ones from Vietnam. Beyond family reunification, the threat of deportations targeting individuals with prior criminal records remains a point of deep concern for the Southeast Asian diaspora. These enforcement measures are closely tied to ongoing budget negotiations, and while the Senate’s latest moves are seen as an attempt to alleviate some of this pressure, the situation remains precarious for our community until a final deal is reached between Congress and the White House.