Republican leaders in Congress said Wednesday that they have agreed to move ahead on a Senate bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security, except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. If approved, the legislation would end the current partial government shutdown, now in its 47th day.
House Republicans angrily rejected the bill last week, declaring that they would never support legislation that slights the nation’s immigration enforcement agencies. President Trump also spoke out against the bill, saying, “In my opinion, you can't have a bill that's not going to fund ICE.”
As an alternative, the House passed a bill that would fund all of DHS for eight weeks, an approach that was all but guaranteed to be rejected by Democrats in the Senate, leaving the two chambers in a stalemate as the shutdown continued.
The newly revived Senate bill would fund most of DHS through September, ICE and CBP excepted. The immigration agencies received extraordinarily high levels of funding in the reconciliation bill Republicans passed last summer and would continue to draw on those funds for the rest of the fiscal year. The bill does not include any reforms or restrictions on ICE and CBP, something Democrats had demanded following violent immigration crackdowns by the Trump administration earlier this year.
Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, could take up the bill as soon as Thursday morning, even though most lawmakers are away during a two-week recess, The New York Times’ Carl Hulse reports. Both the House and the Senate have pro forma sessions scheduled on Thursday, and the bill could be approved by voice vote, as long as there are no objections.
“If all goes as planned, the Senate will take up and table an eight-week funding bill for the agency that the House approved last week,” Hulse said. “The Senate would then agree to send its bill back to the House, where it could be approved and sent to the president.”
A White House official said Trump would sign the bill, despite his previous opposition.
Trump demands funding bill: Earlier Wednesday, Trump called on Republican lawmakers to send him a bill funding immigration enforcement in full by June 1, using an approach “that doesn’t need Radical Left Democrat votes.”
The budget reconciliation process would allow Republicans to pass a bill in the Senate with a simple majority, denying Democrats the ability to block it.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump said he wants Republicans to move quickly. “We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Trump said.
In a joint statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune said they had agreed on “a path forward to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security.” Republicans will work on “two parallel tracks,” using both the normal appropriations process and a separate reconciliation bill.
“In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited,” Johnson and Thune said.
There are no guarantees, of course, that the two-track approach will succeed, and it could take months for the reconciliation process to play out.
In the meantime, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to the news of the deal, saying, “House Republicans caved.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also noted the Republican change of heart. “Mike Johnson and House Republicans have come to realize that we will never bend the knee,” Jeffries said in a statement. “It’s time to pay TSA agents, end the airport chaos and fully fund every part of the Department of Homeland Security that does not relate to Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine.”