Growing outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions — further inflamed by Saturday’s ICE killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and by the Trump administration’s version of the incident, which was plainly contradicted by eyewitness video of the shooting — means there is now a growing likelihood of a partial government shutdown at the end of the month.
Congress has already passed six of the 12 annual spending bills for this fiscal year, but with much of the government operating on stopgap funding and a January 30 deadline looming, the Senate planned to vote this week on the remaining six bills, which were approved by the House last week. Five of those bills, providing funding for the Pentagon as well as the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, Transportation, State and other federal agencies and programs, have broad bipartisan support. But the bill providing $64.4 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, including $10 billion for ICE, already faced Democratic opposition — and that opposition got ratcheted up by Pretti’s fatal shooting, the second high-profile killing by immigration officers in Minneapolis this month following the shooting of Renee Good.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer announced Saturday that Democrats would block the funding package if the Homeland Security bill is included, calling the measure “woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE.” Several centrist Democrats who had helped negotiate the deal ending last year’s record shutdown also said they would oppose the spending package if it included the DHS bill.
“We have bipartisan agreement on 96% of the budget,” Nevada’s Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said in a statement. “We’ve already passed six funding bills. Let’s pass the remaining five bipartisan bills and fund essential agencies while we continue to fight for a Department of Homeland Security that respects Americans’ constitutional rights and preserves federal law enforcement’s essential role to keep us safe.”
Schumer also called on Senate Republicans to pass the five funding bills that have bipartisan backing and rework the Homeland Security measure. The House, which is out of session this week, would have to pass the funding bills again if the package is changed.
Faced with a choice, Senate Republican leaders reportedly want to move ahead with votes on all six bills. To pull the DHS funding out of the full spending package, Senate Majority Leader John Thune would need the consent of all 100 senators. Some Republicans have reportedly already pushed back against any effort to “defund” DHS, and many GOP lawmakers would likely object to any Democratic proposals for changes to ICE. “Now is not the time to defund one of our major national security priorities: border protection. Nor is it the right time to defund law enforcement trying to clean up the mess created by the Biden illegal immigrant invasion,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham wrote in a post on X.
On the other hand, withholding the DHS bill likely wouldn’t have much effect on the ICE operations given that last year’s Republican reconciliation bill provided a $75 billion funding boost for the agency.
“ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap, whether or not we pass a funding bill,” Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, said in a post on X Monday. “But we all saw another American shot and killed in broad daylight. There must be accountability, and we must keep pushing Republicans to work with us to rein in DHS.”
Murray, who had negotiated the funding bills and urged her colleagues to support them, announced on Saturday that she would not back the DHS bill. “Federal agents cannot murder people in broad daylight and face zero consequences,” she wrote. “The DHS bill needs to be split off from the larger funding package before the Senate—Republicans must work with us to do that.”
Despite those Democratic demands, the White House on Monday called for the Senate to pass the full six-bill package. “At this point, the White House supports the bipartisan work that was done to advance the bipartisan appropriations package, and we want to see that passed,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, noting that the DHS bill also includes vital funding for FEMA that may be needed to respond to the massive winter storm that swept through much of the country. “We absolutely do not want to see that funding lapse, and we want the Senate to move forward with passing the bipartisan appropriations package.”
Trump administration officials have defended the shootings of both Good and Pretti as justified.
What’s next: The Senate postponed its first votes of the week until Tuesday because of the snowstorm. It is expected to hold its first votes on the funding package on Thursday.