On the 76th day since Department of Homeland Security funding lapsed, Congress passed a bill Thursday restoring the flow of federal dollars to most of its agencies — without solving any of the policy disagreements that led to the record-breaking shutdown.
The House approved by voice vote the partial DHS funding measure the Senate passed more than a month ago. President Donald Trump is expected to swiftly sign the bipartisan legislation, fully funding the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, along with other offices within DHS that don’t deal with immigration enforcement.
Now congressional Republicans turn their attention to enacting tens of billions of dollars for Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a party-line package. They jump-started the process this week with the adoption of a framework unlocking special budget power to skirt the Senate filibuster.
Trump is demanding that bill, which would fund the controversial agencies for the remainder of his term, land on his desk by June 1. ICE and Border Patrol have been operating largely as normal during the shutdown due to funding previously provided in last year’s GOP megabill.
The upshot of the two-track approach to funding DHS is that there will be no changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, which led to the shutdown stalemate that began in February after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
In the more than 10 weeks since DHS funding lapsed, Democrats have remained largely united in refusing to support funding for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activities without new guardrails. Republicans, meanwhile, are doubling down on funding those agencies without strings — emphasizing a blunt partisan divide five months before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
House GOP leaders sat on the bipartisan package for weeks, scoffing at the late-night decision Senate leaders made last month to fund DHS through the two-step maneuver without consulting their House counterparts.
“You don’t dump things on the other chamber in the middle of the night without talking to the speaker about it,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters this week. “This is created by bad management in Senate leadership and by not being transparent and open with us in the House.”
But pressure from the White House and some Republican lawmakers prompted House GOP leaders to ultimately pass the package unchanged, even after floating the idea of tweaking the bill and sending it back across the Capitol.
Trump administration officials have grown increasingly antsy to see the legislation enacted after nearly draining the $10 billion fund they have been tapping to cover paychecks for DHS workers. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned last week that his department would run out of payroll money in the coming days.
Under the package, all of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol will be funded through September, the end of the fiscal year.
The legislation includes some new guardrails on immigration enforcement tactics negotiated early this year. But it does not contain any of the additional rules Democrats sought, including barring immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring judicial warrants to make arrests or enter private property.
The end result of the funding lapse is largely what top Democrats have advocated for months as a fallback plan if Republicans wouldn’t agree to any new enforcement restrictions. Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, introduced a bill more than two months ago to fund all but ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the Office of the Secretary at DHS.
Instead, House Republicans repeatedly passed legislation to fund all of DHS throughout the shutdown, daring lawmakers on the other side of the aisle to oppose it. While a few Democrats broke ranks, the Republican attempts were met with consistent opposition among Democrats in the Senate, where the bills inevitably ran up against the filibuster.
Off the Hill, TSA agents and other DHS workers who aren’t considered law enforcement personnel worked for weeks without pay, until Trump directed DHS to temporarily cover their paychecks last month.
Since the funding lapse began, more than 1,100 agents have quit at TSA and some homeland security efforts have been halted, including preparations for the World Cup soccer games being hosted in U.S. cities this summer.
Andres Picon contributed to this report.
