President Donald Trump vowed to sign an executive order to “immediately” pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers amid the ongoing shutdown impacting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Hours later, Senate Democrats caved and helped pass a new, last-minute deal that brings Congress one step closer to ending the Homeland Security shutdown.
In the early hours of Friday morning, the Senate unanimously passed a deal to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This was 42 days into the shutdown that was caused by the Trump administration’s immigration operations in Minnesota.
It was an agreement that gave New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats some of what they wanted: no money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). But it didn’t have the strict changes they wanted, like making agents show their faces or getting court orders.
Thune said that Democrats are still losing the policy fight over immigration enforcement, even though the deal is similar to past attempts by Democrats to pass similar laws that set aside money for immigration.
“We’ve been trying for weeks to fund the whole thing,” Thune said. “And, I mean, in the end, this is what they were willing to agree to. But again, it’s different because it has zero reforms in it. I mean, 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.”
Schumer said that if Republicans hadn’t blocked their initial attempts, “this 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 caucus. My caucus held the line.”
The House will now look at the DHS funding deal. Republicans aren’t happy about not funding important parts of President Donald Trump’s plan to crack down on immigration.
The most recent plan came after Senate Democrats stopped a seventh attempt to reopen DHS. Talks that went back and forth all day Thursday didn’t seem to get them any closer to a solution. Trump also said he would sign an order that would pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents as long as lines and wait times at major airports continue during the shutdown.
The Republicans’ main point all along has been that if Schumer and his caucus wanted reforms, they would have to agree to pay for immigration enforcement. This is partly a concession to the Democrats.
And ICE and CBP are still flush with roughly $75 billion in cash from Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” giving the agencies a buffer for a time.
“The good news is we anticipated this a year ago. I mean, one of the reasons we front-loaded, pre-loaded up the ‘one big, beautiful bill’ with advanced funding for Homeland Security was because we anticipated this was likely going to happen, and it did,” Thune said. “I still think it’s unfortunate. The Dems wanted reforms. We tried to work with them on reforms. They ended up getting no reforms.”
The same process used to pass that colossal legislative package will likely be turned to again fund immigration enforcement.
Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt envisions funding ICE and CBP for several years.
“Democrats are trying to shut down ICE funding for the remainder of the fiscal year — ultimately, they won’t be successful,” Schmitt said on X. “In response, I’ll be pushing to lock in funding for deportation operations and salaries for a decade.”
It might still be hard to do this, though, because Republicans want to add a few other things to the mix, like parts of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act and money for the war in Iran.
Some Republicans are already lowering their expectations about what can and can’t be done in the party-line process, since anything in the bill has to meet strict rules in the Senate.
“I think we have to set our sights a little bit lower on this reconciliation bill,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Fox News. “It’s got to be targeted to fund ICE for 10 years, I think that’s the number one thing to us.”