Shortly after 2 a.m. Friday, Senate Republicans caved to Democrats. The Senate voted unanimously to advance a deal to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security. The agreement, however, provides no funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
The 53–47 vote came on the 42nd day of a shutdown that has wreaked havoc in airports nationwide and followed the Democrats’ seventh refusal on Thursday to accept a prior deal.
President Donald Trump, angry over the Democrats’ continued defiance, announced on Truth Social that he would sign an executive order “instructing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA Agents.”
While Republicans ultimately conceded many of the Democrats’ demands, they point to what is, in fact, a silver lining. The deal excludes many of the reforms the Democrats had sought, such as forcing agents to unmask and requiring ICE officers to obtain judicial warrants before performing certain operations, such as entering someone’s home or making an arrest inside it.
Following the vote, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said, “We’ve been trying for weeks to fund the whole thing. And, I mean, in the end, this is what they were willing to agree to.
“But again, it’s different that 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.”
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin emphasized this point in the following X post. Because Senate Democrats rejected the Republicans’ offer on DHS funding, he noted:
Dems will get *zero* of the ICE reforms they had been demanding, including ones that GOP had already agreed to, like showing ID, increased Congressional oversight, agreements to not hit sensitive locations, etc.These reforms were the reason Dems started the shutdown in the first place, and now instead of getting a few concessions on their demand list, they get none.The only thing they secured was no funding for CBP & ICE, which are largely already funded via the OBBB, and Republicans will seek to fund them even further without Dem votes in reconciliation instead.As for the Dem’s demand list on ICE reforms?“That ship has sailed,” Sen. Majority Leader John Thune said this morning. “They kissed that opportunity goodbye by failing to provide funding for those agencies.”
Thune pointed out that, anticipating this precise scenario, Republicans included funding for ICE and CBP in last year’s “big, beautiful bill.” He explained:
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. I still think it’s unfortunate. The Dems wanted reforms. We tried to work with them on reforms. They ended up getting no reforms.
Moreover, Thune added that he hopes to include additional funding for DHS in a reconciliation bill which requires only 51 votes to pass.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), of course, crowed over his “win.” He said, “This is exactly what we wanted. This is what we asked for, and I’m very proud of my caucus. My caucus held the line.”
He added that “this could have been done three weeks ago,” if Republicans had not tried to block their efforts.
The DHS funding deal now heads to the House, where Republicans are unlikely to welcome the concessions to Democrats. Still, they recognize the urgency of passing the bill.
In the X post below, conservative analyst Guy Benson reacts with frustration over the final result of the Republicans’ “fight.”
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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