The Senate voted Thursday morning to send a bipartisan bill funding most of the Department of Homeland Security to the House, moving to end a 48-day partial shutdown that has left ICE and Border Patrol support staff without paychecks for seven weeks. The measure passed by voice vote, and it does not include a dime for immigration enforcement.
That is not a minor detail. It is the whole story. Senate Democrats spent nearly two months blocking any DHS spending bill that included money for ICE or the Border Patrol. Now they will get a funding package that zeros out both agencies' enforcement budgets, while Republican leaders pin their hopes on a separate reconciliation bill that has not yet been written, let alone passed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who rejected the same Senate measure last week, appeared to relent Wednesday after President Trump endorsed the two-track approach. The House is not expected to vote until lawmakers return to Washington on April 13.
The bill funds most of DHS, including roughly $11 billion in customs funding for Customs and Border Protection. But it strips out the approximately $10 billion that had been teed up for ICE. Border Patrol operations beyond customs functions are also excluded.
Republican leaders say they will pursue a party-line budget reconciliation package to restore that money, and then some. GOP lawmakers have floated seeking three full years of funding for ICE and the Border Patrol through reconciliation, with some members proposing funding for up to a decade. Trump wants the reconciliation bill on his desk by June 1.
The reconciliation process allows a party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress to pass tax and spending priorities with a simple majority, bypassing the Senate's 60-vote filibuster threshold. Republicans used the same process last year to tee up $75 billion for enforcement operations over four fiscal years when they passed Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025.
The gamble is straightforward: fund everything Democrats will agree to now, then use reconciliation to fund everything they won't. Whether that gamble pays off depends entirely on whether congressional Republicans can hold their own coalition together on a reconciliation vote that has not yet been scheduled.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wasted no time declaring Wednesday that his caucus had won the standoff. As the Washington Times reported, the bill funds most of DHS but contains no new money for ICE or Border Patrol functions, exactly the outcome Democrats demanded from the start.
Schumer, in remarks Wednesday, framed the result as a clean win for his party:
"Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered. We were clear from the start: fund critical security, protect Americans, and no blank check for reckless ICE and Border Patrol enforcement."
He added: "We were united, held the line, and refused to let Republican chaos win."
Whether you call that principled opposition or obstruction depends on where you stand. But the facts are plain: Democrats blocked ICE and Border Patrol funding repeatedly since the shutdown began in mid-February, and the bill that emerged gives them what they wanted, a DHS appropriation with no immigration enforcement money attached.
Schumer had earlier declared a rival House proposal "dead on arrival" in the Senate. He was right. The House plan went nowhere, and Johnson ultimately accepted the Senate's version.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who helped steer the measure through the Senate last week, was candid about the position his party found itself in. He blamed Democrats for holding the appropriations process hostage, but he did not pretend the outcome was what Republicans wanted.
Thune told reporters after the vote:
"I think this whole where we are is just a regrettable place. We have the Democrats who are holding the appropriations process hostage and their anti-law enforcement, open borders, defund the police wing is the ascendant wing."
He continued: "And there, I think everybody's afraid of them, and so we're stuck in a spot that's just not good for the country, the future of the appropriations process, or, for that matter, the future of the Senate."
Breitbart reported that Thune called the outcome "unfortunate", a word that captures the mood among Republicans who backed the deal not because they liked it, but because they ran out of leverage.
Not every Republican is on board. Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania wrote on social media Wednesday that he would vote no when the bill reaches the House floor.
Perry's message was blunt:
"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again. If that's the vote, I'm a NO."
House GOP leadership privately acknowledged the difficulty of the vote. Members described the bill as a "crap sandwich", their words, not ours, reflecting frustration at a deal that funds the department but not the agencies most directly responsible for immigration enforcement.
Perry's objection highlights a real tension. Republican leaders rallied behind the two-track plan after Trump endorsed it, but rank-and-file conservatives see a party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress agreeing to a spending bill that excludes the president's top domestic priority.
While lawmakers traded statements and social media posts, support staff employed by ICE and the Border Patrol have gone without pay during the entire seven-week shutdown. These are not political appointees. They are the administrative workers, analysts, and logistics personnel who keep enforcement operations running.
The New York Post reported that the shutdown's effects extended well beyond enforcement agencies. Nearly 500 TSA screeners quit during the funding lapse, and airport wait times exceeded four and a half hours in some cases. Trump had warned he would take emergency action to pay TSA agents if Congress failed to act.
The bill now heading to the House would end those disruptions, for most of DHS. But ICE and Border Patrol staff remain in limbo until the reconciliation package materializes.
The entire Republican strategy now rests on a reconciliation bill that does not yet exist. Just the News confirmed the bill is part of a two-track strategy backed by GOP leaders and tied to Trump's deadline to end the funding lapse. But reconciliation is governed by stringent rules about what can be included, and the process requires every Republican senator to stay in line.
Trump signaled confidence on Truth Social Wednesday: "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."
That may prove true. Republicans used reconciliation successfully last year. But the June 1 deadline is ambitious, and the legislative calendar between now and then is crowded. If the reconciliation bill stalls, ICE and the Border Patrol will have been defunded in practice, not by Democratic legislation, but by Republican acquiescence to a deal that excluded them.
The administration and congressional allies have consistently placed responsibility for the shutdown squarely on Democrats. That argument carries weight: Senate Democrats did block every funding bill that included ICE money. But the resolution Republicans accepted validates the Democratic strategy. It proves that holding firm on enforcement funding works, at least in the short term.
House lawmakers return to Washington on April 13. Johnson is expected to bring the Senate bill to the floor. If it passes, most of DHS gets funded through the remainder of the fiscal year, and the shutdown ends.
Then comes the hard part. Republicans must draft, negotiate, and pass a reconciliation package that funds ICE and the Border Patrol, potentially for three years or longer, without losing a single Senate vote. They must do it by June 1 if they want to meet the president's deadline.
The question is not whether Republicans want to fund immigration enforcement. They plainly do. The question is whether splitting the fight into two tracks was a tactical retreat that sets up a bigger win, or a concession that hands Democrats a template for future shutdowns: block the parts you don't like, wait for the other side to fold, and call it a victory.
Chuck Schumer already has his answer. The rest of us will have to wait for the reconciliation vote to find out.
