Senate unanimously advances DHS funding deal without ICE and CBP amid shutdown
The Senate unanimously approved a deal to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the early hours of Friday morning, after 42 days of closures spurred by the Trump administration’s immigration operations in Minnesota.
It was an agreement that gave Schumer and Senate Democrats pretty much what they wanted — no funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But it lacked the tough reforms they wanted, such as requiring court orders or requiring customers to unmask.
Schumer, Democrats defund DHS again, Trump steps in to pay TSA agents’ salaries
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republicans made what was likely their “last” offer to Democrats to reopen the Department of Homeland Security. (Stephanie Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
While the deal mirrors Democrats’ previous attempts to pass similar legislation that contributed to immigration funding, Thune said Democrats are still coming up empty-handed in the political battle over immigration enforcement.
“We’ve been trying for weeks to finance the whole thing,” Thune said. “And I mean, in the end, that’s what they were willing to agree to. But again, it’s different because there wasn’t any reforms to it. I mean, they didn’t get any reforms to DHS, which they would have gotten if they had been willing to work with us a little bit on this.”
Schumer said that if Republicans had not blocked their primary efforts, “it could have been done three weeks ago.”
“This is exactly what we wanted,” Schumer said. “This is what we asked for, and I’m very proud of my electoral party. My electoral party has stuck to the line.”
The DHS funding deal now heads to the House of Representatives, where Republicans don’t seem keen on defunding key components of the president Donald Trump Anti-immigration agenda.
The latest plan came after Senate Democrats blocked a seventh attempt to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, after back-and-forth talks throughout the day Thursday appeared to yield little progress toward a solution. Trump also announced his intention to sign an order that would pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents at a time when major airports have been rocked by staggering lines and wait times amid the shutdown.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats rejected a recent deal reached by Republicans to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, promising to make a counteroffer with reforms in return. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
While this is, in part, an additional concession to Democrats, the basic argument Republicans have made all along is that if Schumer and his caucus want reform, they will have to agree to fund the reforms. Immigration enforcement.
ICE and Customs and Border Protection still have roughly $75 billion in cash from Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” giving the agencies a buffer for some time.
“The good news is we predicted this a year ago. I mean, one of the reasons we front-loaded this big, beautiful bill with front-loading funding for Homeland Security is because we predicted this was likely to happen, and it did,” Thune said. “I still think it’s unfortunate. Democrats wanted reforms. We tried to work with them on reforms. They ended up not getting reforms.”
The same process used to pass that massive legislative package to fund immigration enforcement will likely have to be transformed again.
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US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer Badge and Equipment. (Michael Sellock/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Sen. Eric Schmidt, Republican of Missouri, expects to fund ICE and CBP for several years.
“Democrats are trying to shut down ICE funding for the remainder of the fiscal year — and ultimately they won’t succeed,” Schmidt said on X. In response, I will push to secure it. Financing relocations And salaries for a decade.”
Doing so may be difficult, given that Republicans want to throw several other priorities into the mix, including parts of the American Voter Eligibility Protection Act and funding for the Iran war.
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Some Republicans have already begun to formulate expectations about what can and cannot be accomplished in the party-line process, given that anything in the bill must pass muster on votes. Strict rules in the Senate.
“I think we have to set our sights a little bit on this reconciliation bill,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told Fox News Digital. “It has to be targeted ICE financing for 10 years, “I think that’s the number one thing for us.”
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