Trump, GOP leaders unveil plan to end DHS shutdown through Senate bill and reconciliation

Washington — Republican leaders in Congress and President Trump unveiled a plan Wednesday to end the partial government shutdown and fully fund the Department of Homeland Security, mirroring a framework that the Senate pursued last week before it was quickly batted down by House Republicans. 

House GOP leadership spent all day last Friday criticizing Senate legislation that split off immigration enforcement funding from the rest of DHS, but they now appear to have reversed course.

In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump demanded that Congress fund ICE and Border Patrol through reconciliation, which would allow Republicans to pass a bill without Senate Democrats. He told lawmakers to get the legislation to his desk by June 1. 

“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,” Mr. Trump said. 

The plan would fund most of DHS until October through an appropriations bill while funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through reconciliation. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune soon said they would work to make it happen.

“In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” Johnson and Thune said in a joint statement. 

The House and Senate are currently away from Washington on recess. But a vote in the Senate could come as soon as Thursday, when the chamber will hold a pro forma session. The House is also set to meet later Thursday for a pro forma session. 

Thune, a South Dakota Republican, and Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, pointed to the Senate Budget Committee’s efforts to kickstart the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party in power to approve legislation with direct budgetary consequences without support from across the aisle. Republicans are aiming to approve funding for immigration enforcement for three years. 

Democrats have refused for months to fund ICE following two deadly shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis. They were negotiating with Republicans and the White House in recent weeks over their demands for reforms, which included body cameras, requiring that ICE agents not wear masks and mandating judicial warrants for entering homes. 

The negotiations appeared to gain steam as the situation at airports became dire amid TSA staffing shortages. But when talks stalled, Senate Republicans offered to fund all of DHS except for its immigration enforcement. The president directed that TSA be paid through an alternate funding source. 

Early in the morning last Friday, the Senate unanimously approved a deal that would have funded all of DHS except ICE and parts of CBP. The legislation did not include most of the reforms to federal immigration enforcement that Democrats demanded.

But House conservatives refused to support the Senate legislation, opposing the separation of funding for immigration enforcement. GOP leaders instead offered a 60-day continuing resolution that would have funded the whole department. 

The Senate plan could have garnered enough support from House Democrats for passage if it had been put on the floor Friday, according to Democratic leaders. Instead, the House passed the short-term funding patch in a vote nearly along party lines that had no chance of clearing the Senate. 

Thune and Johnson said Wednesday that “it is now abundantly clear that Democrats place allegiance to their radical left-wing base above all else.”

“We cannot allow Democrats to any longer put the safety of the American public at risk through their open border policies, so we are taking that off the table,” they wrote. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized GOP disunity in a statement responding to the announcement, saying “Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction.”

“Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat. “We were clear from the start: fund critical security, protect Americans, and no blank check for reckless ICE and Border Patrol enforcement. We were united, held the line, and refused to let Republican chaos win.”