Republican leaders agree to advance funding deal to end DHS shutdown | Trump administration
An end to the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be on the horizon after Republican leaders in Congress agreed on Wednesday to advance legislation that would fund the majority of the agency’s operations, except those related to immigration enforcement.
The deal could conclude the longest such funding cut in U.S. history; This led to security lines stretching for hours at some airports last month as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees, a subsidiary of DHS, walked off their jobs or were laid off after working for weeks without pay.
Wait times decreased earlier this week after Donald Trump signed an order requiring TSA workers to receive paychecks.
House speaker Mike Johnson and Senate majority leader John Thune said in a joint statement that they would move to pass a measure unanimously approved by the Senate last week that would fund DHS while excluding money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of Customs and Border Protection.
They would also abandon a push by House Republicans to fully fund DHS for 60 days; Senate Democrats have vowed to block it with a filibuster.
Democrats have objected to funding ICE and other agencies involved in Trump’s mass deportation campaign unless the administration adopts new rules governing agents’ conduct when making immigration arrests, including a mask ban and a requirement to obtain judicial authorization before entering residences.
To overcome their objections, Thune and Johnson endorsed a plan by Senate budget committee chairman Lindsey Graham to write a measure funding ICE that could be passed only with Republican votes using the budget reconciliation procedure.
“We appreciate that Senator Graham and the Senate budget committee have already begun the process of developing a budget resolution that would ensure border security and immigration enforcement are funded on balance by the Trump administration and protected from future attempts by Democrats to defund these agencies,” Republican leaders said.
It remains unclear when the Senate and House of Representatives, which are scheduled to be in recess this week and into next week, will be able to pass the DHS funding bill.
Johnson and Thune said they hoped to resolve the matter “in the coming days”; This is a sign that they may try to pass the issue in brief ceremonial sessions that the chamber will hold during congressional recesses. The next meetings of both the House of Representatives and the Senate are scheduled for Thursday morning.
The outcome represents a mixed bag for Democrats, who killed the annual appropriations bill for the Homeland Security Department in January after immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during a highly public crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Demands for reform led to a partial shutdown of DHS in mid-February, but ICE and other agencies continued to conduct arrests and deportations using funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Obba), and the funding measure set to pass Congress lacked the reforms they called for.
Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer accused the GOP of prolonging the shutdown in a statement, citing the split in the party that emerged last week when Johnson, apparently at the urging of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, rejected the Senate’s unanimously-passed bill and tried to force passage of a measure funding DHS for two months without Democratic support.
“Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement for days and left American families paying the price for their dysfunction,” Schumer said.
“Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered. We were clear from the beginning: We fund critical security, we protect Americans, and we do not give a blank check to reckless ICE and Border Patrol practices. We stood united, held the line, and refused to let Republican chaos win.”
Republicans, meanwhile, are preparing for weeks of tough negotiations over the compromise bill, which would be the second bill passed after Obba since Trump returned to the White House.
Last week, Graham, whose committee will take the lead in writing the measure, signaled it would also include money to pay for the conflict with Iran, as well as elements of the Save America Act that would impose a host of new ID requirements for voters when registering and voting.
