Senate Republicans just passed a $70 billion budget resolution to fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection for the next three years. The vote was 50-48, almost entirely along party lines, because apparently “securing the border” is now a partisan position in America.

Welcome to clown world.

Here’s what happened. Democrats pulled their little stunt back in February and triggered a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Just — poof — turned off the lights on the agencies responsible for keeping illegal aliens, drug traffickers, and violent criminals from waltzing into your neighborhood. They blocked ICE funding because they thought it would make Trump look bad.

So Republicans said, “Fine. We’ll go around you.” They used budget reconciliation to bypass the filibuster entirely and locked in three full years of funding. Three years. That means ICE and CBP are funded through the rest of Trump’s term, and Democrats can’t touch it.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune put it perfectly: “Republicans will have helped ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies.” No drama. No hand-wringing. Just results.

Remember “Abolish ICE”? That was the hot slogan back in 2018 when every Democrat with a Twitter account was tripping over themselves to prove who hated immigration enforcement the most. AOC was printing t-shirts. Rashida Tlaib was giving speeches. Kirsten Gillibrand — who previously supported building a border wall, by the way — suddenly decided ICE was basically the Gestapo.

Funny how quiet that crowd got once the border turned into an actual crisis. Once fentanyl started killing 70,000 Americans a year. Once Venezuelan gangs started taking over apartment buildings in Colorado. Once migrant crime stories became so common that even CNN couldn’t ignore all of them. (They still ignored most of them, but baby steps.)

The Democrats’ brilliant strategy here was to shut down DHS and then blame Trump for the chaos. Except Americans aren’t stupid. They watched Democrats block funding for the exact agencies that catch criminals and deport people who aren’t supposed to be here, and they connected the dots immediately.

Now, it wasn’t a perfect vote. Senator Rand Paul voted against it because of the $70 billion price tag. And look — we love Rand. The man has never met a dollar of government spending he didn’t want to fight. But this is border security. If we’re going to spend $70 billion on anything, “keeping violent criminals out of the country” seems like a solid investment. Better than whatever USAID was blowing it on.

Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana tried to attach the SAVE Act — which would require proof of citizenship to vote — to the resolution. It didn’t pass, which is a shame. Kennedy warned this was “the last train leaving the station” for getting election protections into law. He’s not wrong, and we should be furious that one failed. But we’ll take the ICE win today and fight that battle tomorrow.

The resolution now heads to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson needs to bring it to a vote. Given that House Republicans just watched the Senate actually do something useful for once, there’s no excuse for delay.

Here’s the bottom line. Democrats spent years telling us that immigration enforcement was racist, that ICE was running “concentration camps,” and that the compassionate thing to do was open the borders and hand out welcome baskets. They got their wish under Biden. The borders opened. Millions poured in. Americans died.

And now that Republicans are locking in the funding to make sure ICE can never be defunded on a Democrat’s whim again? Every single Democrat in the Senate voted no.

Every. Single. One.

Remember that the next time they tell you they care about public safety. They had the chance to vote for it, and they chose politics instead. As usual.