Senate closes in on potential deal to end DHS shutdown

Washington — The Senate is closing in on a deal to fund the bulk of the Department of Homeland Security and end the six-week partial government shutdown that has thrown air travel into turmoil.

A group of Senate Republicans met with President Trump at the White House on Monday evening and returned to the Capitol optimistic about a possible deal. Asked by reporters if Republicans had a solution, Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said, “We do.”

Senate Republicans said they sent Democrats a formal offer on Tuesday as they aim to resolve the impasse later this week. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune met with some of the key Republicans involved in the talks Tuesday morning. He told reporters at the Capitol that “the meeting yesterday went well, and we’re proceeding.”

Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said the offer is to fund 94% of the DHS budget while withholding $5.5 billion for ICE’s deportation arm, known as Enforcement and Removal Operations. ICE received a slew of funding in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which has allowed the agency to continue functioning during the shutdown. 

The emerging agreement would fund many of the agencies DHS oversees, like TSA, FEMA and the Coast Guard. Senate Republicans would then work to approve the excluded ICE deportation funds, and elements of an elections bill known as the SAVE America Act, through the budget reconciliation process.

Budget reconciliation would give Republicans the ability to approve a package with a simple majority, instead of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation. But the maneuver comes with limitations, chiefly that the bill’s components must have a direct impact on the budget.

Republicans used reconciliation to approve the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. But some GOP lawmakers have come out against trying to use reconciliation for the SAVE America Act, saying key components of the bill wouldn’t comply with the strict budget rules.

“It’s hard to imagine how the SAVE America Act could be passed through reconciliation,” Utah Sen. Mike Lee wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible.'”

DHS has been shut down since Feb. 14. Democrats have refused to fund the agency without reforms to ICE following two deadly shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis in January. Senate Democrats have been swapping proposals with the White House in recent weeks, and a bipartisan group of senators met twice last week with border czar Tom Homan amid increased pressure to end the stalemate.

The apparent breakthrough came after the president threw a wrench into talks over funding DHS on Monday by demanding that Republicans refrain from making a deal. He argued that lawmakers should link DHS funding with the SAVE America Act. The president has put pressure on lawmakers for weeks to approve the elections bill, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast a ballot. Democrats strongly oppose the bill.

But after the meeting at the White House, which GOP Sens. Steve Daines of Montana, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Britt attended, a path forward appeared viable. 

Thune said the senators raised the possibility of using reconciliation in making their case to the president. And he said they made clear to the president that the deal is a “good outcome.”

“We’ve moved the Democrats a long way in our direction,” Thune said.

But whether Democrats will accept the offer without the reforms to ICE that they have sought since January remains to be seen. Thune said “a lot of the reforms are contingent on funding for ICE.”

“If you’re not going to have funding, I don’t know how all of a sudden now you can demand reforms,” Thune added.