After 42 days of infighting on Capitol Hill and growing security lines at airports, the Senate early Friday morning approved a bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, the first — yet significant — step in ending the shutdown at the sprawling agency.
But there’s still a ways to go before the lights turn back on at DHS. The next stop is the House of Representatives, which could vote as early as Friday.
“Hopefully [the House will] be around and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” Thune said heading to the Senate floor in the early hours of Friday morning. “But obviously we’ll still have some work ahead of us.”
The legislation — passed by unanimous consent — would fund all of DHS through the end of the fiscal year except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol operations at Customs and Border Protection. Republicans are looking to fund those agencies through the party-line budget reconciliation process, which could get messy down the road.
The move marked a win for Democrats who, after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers in January, said they wouldn’t approve any more money for ICE unless Congress placed new guardrails on the agency.
The move marked a win for Democrats who, after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers in January, said they wouldn’t approve any more money for ICE unless Congress placed new guardrails on the agency, a posture that prompted the six-weeks-and-counting shutdown. And the final deal largely mirrored the proposal Democrats have been offering for weeks: To split off ICE funding from a DHS package.
“In the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats were clear: No blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor Friday morning.
ICE still has funding from the GOP reconciliation bill passed last summer.
But in a victory for Republicans — and a blow to Democrats — the package doesn’t include any of the reforms Democrats sought and GOP lawmakers opposed, including requiring that federal agents remove their masks and obtain judicial warrants before entering homes and businesses. Republicans argued that since the legislation doesn’t appropriate money for ICE, they don’t need to add reforms for the agency.
“The reforms were all laid out to say, for funding — if we’re doing the full funding, we’re also doing reforms,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said this week. “If they’re coming back and saying, ‘Oh no, now we changed our mind. Now we want all the reforms, and we don’t want to fund [enforcement and removal operations], they’re asking for their cake and eating it too.”
“The proposals that were there for the reforms were based on if we’re also funding all areas,” he added.
Despite not securing any reforms, Schumer chalked the funding fight up as a victory for Democrats: “Throughout it all, Senate Democrats stood united, no wavering, no backing down. We held the line,” he said Friday.
The deal finally came together at the end of a chaotic week in Washington, which included negotiations starting up — then falling apart — then starting up again, ambiguous messaging from President Donald Trump and growing pressure on lawmakers to strike a deal as security lines at airports grew unbearable.
But in a victory for Republicans — and a blow to Democrats — the package doesn’t include any of the reforms Democrats sought and GOP lawmakers opposed, including requiring that federal agents remove their masks.
That pressure became so great that on Thursday night — as videos of long airport lines and testimonials of travel delays inundated the news — Trump announced on Truth Social that he was directing his newly minted DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who just days ago was a senator, “to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports.”
The decision came after Trump deployed ICE agents to airports across the country to try and curb long security lines.
Shortly after Trump’s TSA announcement, following a marathon, hours-long session in the Senate, lawmakers finally pushed that deal over the finish line. At just after 2 a.m. Friday morning, Thune walked on the floor and requested unanimous consent to approve the legislation. Without any objections, it was deemed passed, putting in motion the end to the third government shutdown of Trump’s second term.
The bill now heads to the House, where it could face a fight from both sides of the aisle.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has been cool to Thune’s call of splitting ICE funding off of the DHS package, refusing to commit to putting the package on the floor as recently as Thursday. Asked by MS NOW if he would put the bill, which Thune called his “last and final offer,” on the floor, Johnson responded: “We’ll have to see.”
“We have never been in favor of breaking the bill up,” he later added.
Other House Republicans agree. During a press conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., this week, Rep. Mark Alford, R-Mo., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, made the case for keeping the DHS funding bill intact.
“When you start splitting things off, it’s going to give the Democrats more leverage in the future, and I guarantee you, they will hang that around the necks of the American people as well in the future,” he said. “Let’s keep this bill together.”
Plenty of Republicans are also clear-eyed about the uphill battle it will be to find ICE and CBP through reconciliation, which allows the party to circumvent Democrats’ opposition, but requires near unanimity among the GOP. Republicans are also considering tacking on Iran war funding and elements of the SAVE America Act — the GOP’s elections reform bill — to the package, which could further complicate the effort.
In the slim House GOP majority, Johnson can only afford to lose one of his members and still get the legislation across the finish line, assuming full attendance and united Democratic opposition.
As the deal began to take shape, House Democrats started lining up in the “no” column. Their main qualm was the lack of reforms — which is the same situation for the final deal.
“My understanding is that there’s no reforms proposed, so that’s not going to fly,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters.
Asked Friday morning if he cleared the package with the House, Thune told reporters, “I don’t know what the House will do.”
“The House is aware of what we’re contemplating, I think, and I think they’re probably anxious to take this up any more than — you know, this time of the day, on a Friday,” he added.
Thune said he texted with Johnson overnight.
For tough votes, Johnson usually turns to Trump to convert skeptics to supporters. This time around, however, it’s unclear if the president will be willing to play the closer.
On Sunday, Trump on Truth Social said “I don’t think we should make any deal” with Democrats until they get behind the SAVE America Act, the president’s top priority that would require proof of citizenship to vote and voter ID — legislation Democrats are strongly opposed to.
On a phone call with Thune that same day, Trump rejected the plan passed Friday morning — funding DHS and dealing with ICE separately — three sources told MS NOW, throwing a wrench in the process.
On Monday, after a meeting at the White House, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Republicans on the Senate floor that Trump was, indeed, in support of the proposal. But on Thursday, he put into question whether he’d support anything.
“I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it,” he told reporters.
But speaking to reporters after the bill passed the Senate early Friday morning, Thune was hopeful that Trump would come on board.
“I hope so,” he said when asked by MS NOW if Trump would ultimately sign the bill. “I never speak for him, but I think he understood where we were, where the Democrats were, which is why he took steps earlier today to deal with the TSA at least temporarily until this hopefully gets across the finish line. So yeah, hope so, we’ll see.”
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