Congress could finally be on track to end the nearly six-week DHS shutdown.
The Senate called an end to weeks of tortured negotiations and voice-voted a bill funding all of DHS except ICE and parts of CBP around 2:30 Friday morning — essentially delivering exactly what Democrats had asked for in recent days.
But Republicans are promising to come back and fund immigration enforcement with a vengeance in an upcoming reconciliation bill — not just for fiscal 2027, but for many years to come.
“What’s coming next will supercharge deportations,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said early Friday morning. “The filibuster cannot save you.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took a victory lap, saying Democrats “held firm in our opposition” that there should be no “blank check” for ICE and CBP.
It’s not a done deal yet, however. The Senate-passed agreement faces a treacherous path in the House, which could act on the bill and send it to President Donald Trump Friday.
But many House Republicans will not be happy about the prospect of voting on a DHS bill that does not include enforcement funding — especially after Trump moved unilaterally Thursday to start paying TSA agents.
House GOP leaders went to bed Thursday night not knowing what the Senate would do, waiting to see what they might pass before formulating a plan.
The usual path for a broadly bipartisan bill — passing it under suspension of the rules with a two-thirds majority — is tricky. Suspension motions aren’t allowed on Fridays under the standing rules, and changing that would require unanimous consent.
The other path is Speaker Mike Johnson convincing his conference to unite behind a rule and put the bill directly on the floor.
He has a case to make to skeptical hard-liners: Democrats didn’t get most of the additional constraints they wanted on the two unfunded immigration agencies. And ICE and CBP can operate indefinitely on what remains of the nearly $140 billion windfall they received under last year’s megabill.
The notion of piling on even more enforcement and deportation money could also give Republicans a powerful goal to rally around as they cook up a new reconciliation bill — much as the promise of big tax cuts made the megabill work.
They can also rest assured that DHS is now in the hands of one of their own: former House and Senate member Markwayne Mullin, who is under fierce pressure to bring a steady hand to the embattled department.
“He didn’t exactly walk into the Pacific Ocean on a calm day,” said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada).
Jordain Carney, Jennifer Scholtes and Eric Bazail-Emil contributed to this report.
