Democrats join Republicans to pass DHS bill despite party opposition

Seven Democrats voted with Republicans on Thursday to pass the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending bill, despite opposition from their own leaders over unmet demands for additional guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.

The DHS bill will be bundled with three other spending bills, bringing total federal spending to $1.2 trillion. Adopting the full package is an important step towards preventing a government shutdown on January 30.

Lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted on two separate packages Thursday afternoon. It bundles together three spending bills, one to fund the departments of War, Education, Labor, Transportation, and Health and Human Services. The second is a standalone bill that funds DHS, which includes ICE.

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The DHS bill passed by a vote of 220 to 207, with the help of seven Democrats. Only one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted against it. The larger package passed with broader bipartisan support, 341 to 88, with 149 Democrats joining Republicans to pass it.

Most Democrats opposed the DHS funding legislation after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, DY and other top Democrats said they opposed the bill because it cited inadequate restrictions against President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.

With legislation in the rearview mirror, the House advanced the final pieces of the puzzle needed to avoid a government shutdown by the end of the month. It was also the first time in nearly 30 years that Congress refrained from funding the government through a major spending bill known as an “omnibus” or short-term incremental funding extensions called “continuing resolutions” (CRs).

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With the passage of Thursday’s package, lawmakers will have introduced four smaller packages containing two to three of the 12 annual appropriations bills.

While some conservatives are still calling for the 12 bills to be passed as separate pieces of legislation, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) framed the GOP effort as a step toward returning Congress to the way the process should work on paper.

“This is a big thing,” Johnson told Fox News Digital. “We will make history this week by ranking 12th” [appropriations] invoices throughout the process. Many people thought it would be impossible. But we stuck with it, we stuck with each other; This is a big thing.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks with reporters outside his office at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 28, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., echoed Johnson’s framework.

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“We are not here for another workaround,” Cole said on the House floor. “We are here to get the job done by providing funding throughout the year. This measure is a product of sustained engagement and serious legislation.”

If passed by the Senate, the bills would eliminate the possibility of a government shutdown for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2026.

Although it eventually won support from Democrats, the final DHS bill faced fierce opposition from much of the party. In their view, the bill failed to bolster protections against ICE abuses following a deadly confrontation between an ICE agent and a woman named Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Good was shot in his car and accused by Republicans of obstructing ICE operations just before his murder.

“Kristi Noem and ICE are out of control. Taxpayer dollars are being misused to brutalize US citizens, including the tragic murder of Renee Nicole Good. This excess must end,” Jeffries said in a statement before the vote.

While the final bill includes some new measures, such as requiring ICE officers to adopt body cameras and receive additional training on how to interact with the public, Democrats said those measures fell woefully inadequate.

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“All the guardrails in the world are pointless if the administration is not going to abide by the law and the language we have adopted. Members need to take notice,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California, the No. 3 Democrat in the House. “Ultimately, members will vote [for] regardless of the interests of their own region.”

The Senate will introduce the package next week, with the deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown quickly approaching the end of this month.

Senate Republicans and Democrats have reached a tenuous truce in the upper chamber after fresh off the longest government shutdown in US history, with neither side intending to turn off the lights in Washington, D.C., again.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-Year) and much of his group argue that the best way to rein in some of the administration’s actions, particularly Trump’s use of ICE, is through the government funding process.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (DY) speaks to the media after the weekly Senate policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on January 13, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

However, although the quadruple bill package was created with a bipartisan touch, its passage to the upper house is not guaranteed.

That’s because there is a group of Senate Democrats who are upset with the restrictions in the DHS funding bill and, like their colleagues in the House, argue they don’t go far enough.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, has signaled that he will not support the package when it reaches the Senate, even though he was part of negotiations on the final product.

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In a lengthy statement, he argued that the bill “lacks meaningful restrictions on ICE’s increased lawlessness and increases detention funding over the last appropriations bill passed in 2024.”

“Democrats have no obligation to support a bill that would not only fund the dystopian scenes we saw in Minneapolis, but also allow DHS to replicate the playbook of this atrocity in cities across this country,” Murphy said.