Senate Votes To Partially Fund DHS, Unclear If House Will Vote To End Shutdown 

The monthlong shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be coming to a close after the Senate unanimously passed a bill that funds most of the department, except for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

According to The New York Times, the vote came after President Donald Trump announced on Thursday evening that he would sign an order to immediately pay TSA agents who have been working without pay for the duration of the shutdown. 

Despite the unanimous vote, the bill isn’t a win for either party. Democrats had been refusing to fund DHS unless there were significant reforms to ICE’s mass deportation campaign. Democrats were demanding that ICE use judicial warrants to enter private property, wear proper identification and body cameras, and ban ICE agents from wearing masks. The spending bill approved by the Senate contains none of that. 

“They got no reforms on DHS, which they could have had if they had been willing to work with us a little bit on that,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters after the bill passed. 

Republicans are also left looking stupid, as the approved bill is basically the same one Democrats introduced two weeks ago when TSA agents missed their first paycheck. “This could’ve been accomplished weeks ago if Republicans hadn’t stood in the way,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said on the Senate floor after the bill passed.

The bill is now in the House, where there’s no guarantee it will pass. The Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, with several Republicans unhappy that the bill doesn’t provide additional funding for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. NBC News reports that members of the House Freedom Caucus have come out against the bill. 

“We can’t believe that the Senate abdicated its responsibility this morning of not funding the child sex-trafficking investigation division of ICE, that they didn’t fund the Border Patrol,” Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) told reporters Friday morning. 

The Freedom Caucus’s complaints are somewhat hyperbolic. As a result of the “Big, Beautiful, Bill” signed into law last year, ICE is guaranteed billions in funding for the next several years, so the agency isn’t hurting for funds despite the shutdown. With the Freedom Caucus a firm no on the bill, House Speaker Mike Johnson will have to rely on House Democrats to pass it. 

Despite the shutdown and increasingly negative polling regarding ICE, Republicans are unlikely to implement any reforms at the agency. In fact, the Washington Post reports that Senate Republicans are planning to send more funding to ICE through a reconciliation bill, which requires a simple majority rather than the 60-vote threshold for spending bills. 

The pressure has continually grown on Congress to pass some type of spending bill to fund DHS, as the shutdown has had a disproportionate impact on TSA agents. 

Callouts have increased dramatically over the last month, which has resulted in hours-long lines at TSA checkpoints at some of the U.S.’s busiest airports. Acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill said that over 480 TSA agents have quit during the shutdown when testifying before the House on Wednesday. TSA already lost over 1,000 agents during the government shutdown last Fall. 

TSA agents are some of the lowest-paid federal employees, with many living paycheck to paycheck. McNeill told the House that she’s heard from many TSA agents who have “missed bill payments, received eviction notices, had their cars repossessed and utilities shut off, lost their child care, defaulted on loans, damaged their credit line and drained their retirement savings,” due to the shutdown. 

Even if the bill is passed on Friday, it could take weeks, if not months, for TSA checkpoints to return to normal levels. It takes four to six months to fully train new TSA agents, so TSA checkpoints may not get back to their status quo until late Summer.