A partial shutdown is ending after the House voted Tuesday to reopen the government, but a full-year Department of Homeland Security funding deal remains elusive as Democrats press immigration enforcement reform demands.
The House voted 217-214 on an appropriations package that includes five full-year funding bills and a 10-day continuing resolution to fund the DHS. The deal kicks the funding deadline for the department down the road to Feb. 13, when lawmakers will either need a negotiated bill or another short-term spending deal.
Twenty-one Democrats voted for the funding legislation, and 21 Republicans voted against. The split in the Democratic caucus comes after House Democratic leadership decided not to whip against the legislation, with caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (D-CA) noting that leaders expected members to vote their conscience earlier in the day.
The legislation now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law, which will end the shutdown that began Saturday. With Tuesday’s vote, over 90% of federal departments and related agencies will be fully funded for fiscal 2026.
Start the clock on Homeland Security funding
Lawmakers from both parties will now enter the final stretch, having 10 calendar days to find a compromise on spending for the DHS.
Though the House passed a full-year bill for the DHS in mid-January, Senate Democrats revolted over the rise in immigration agencies’ use of force while conducting operations. Doing so resulted in Democrats successfully pushing for a continuing resolution, arguing they want to see significant guardrails placed into a DHS funding bill in order to get their support.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a slate of restrictions that Democrats want to impose on agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. Among the demands are judicial warrants, requiring officers to wear body cameras and be unmasked, and the prohibition of detaining and deporting U.S. citizens.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top House Democratic appropriator, advocated her fellow Democrats to vote for the bill. She said voting for the 10-day funding patch gives them “leverage” in negotiations to get the demands Schumer and other Democrats are asking for.
“All of the pieces we’ve been talking about, there’s an opportunity to do that, and let the Republicans defend what’s happening with DHS, and then at the end of those 10 days, if you don’t do anything, you vote against it,” DeLauro said.
“I voted against the homeland bill, and it got separated out, because it was lousy then, and it’s lousy now, and this is our opportunity to change it,” DeLauro added.
Democrats’ demands have faced pushback from Republicans. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has repeatedly said he is against unmasking officers, citing protections for law enforcement officers doing their jobs.
Johnson said Tuesday that judicial warrants are an “unworkable proposal.”
“Imagine if we had to go through the process of getting a judicial warrant, an additional warrant, to go and apprehend people,” the speaker said. “How much time would that take? We don’t have enough judges, we don’t have enough time. It would take decades, probably, to do that.”
“We do have to apply the Constitution,” he added. “We have to respect it, and those parameters need to be determined. But I can tell you that we’re never going to go along with adding an entirely new layer of judicial warrants.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a statement that ICE is “completely out of control” and Democrats are “united” in reforming the DHS — and he also signaled that another shutdown may not be off the table.
“Absent bold and meaningful change, there is no credible path forward with respect to the Department of Homeland Security,” Jeffries said.
SAVE Act rebels cling to hope of Senate loophole
Earlier on Tuesday, Johnson successfully advanced the legislation through its first procedural hurdle despite signals from conservatives that they might sink it over the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship upon registering to vote, has already passed the House twice but has stalled in the Senate, where a 60-vote filibuster threshold often puts partisan legislation at a standstill.
Conservatives in the House threatened to tank the “rule” vote, or a party-line vote taken to advance legislation, if the SAVE Act was not attached to the funding bills. But an intervention from Trump quelled the rebellion, and lawmakers including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and Tim Burchett (R-TN) said the White House promised them the Senate would use a loophole called a “standing filibuster” to pass the SAVE Act.
But that promise seems flimsy, at best. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said Tuesday that he did not commit to a standing or “talking” filibuster, which essentially would mean lawmakers could only block a bill as long as they are willing to stand on the floor and speak.
“I made a commitment to have a conversation about it with our members and try and find out where the consensus of the Republican Conference is,” Thune told the Washington Examiner.
Other GOP senators involved in the discussions were also reportedly surprised by Luna saying she received “assurances,” understanding that the majority leader had made no decisions yet.
By using the standing filibuster, Thune would theoretically only need a simple majority to pass the SAVE Act. The legislation currently has 49 co-sponsors, with the majority leader previously saying he is supportive of the bill. Just one more vote, or a tiebreaker from Vice President JD Vance, would send the SAVE Act to Trump’s desk.
But Thune told reporters that there are a “lot of implications and ramifications” to using the standing filibuster, so that needs to be taken into consideration. A majority of Republicans have been wary of removing the filibuster, arguing that when Democrats come back into power, they will use that to their full advantage.
Thune’s comments hurt Johnson for a time during the procedural vote earlier in the day. Rep. John Rose (R-TN) posted before the vote started that Thune was “backtracking” on bringing the SAVE Act to the floor.
Rose added in a separate post that he does not trust Thune for “suddenly assuring House Republicans they’ll pass the SAVE Act if we shut up and fund the government via their Senate bill.”
“House Republicans MUST hold the line and refuse to fold on something as fundamental as election integrity,” Rose wrote. “The SAVE Act belongs on must-pass legislation.”
Rose, who was a “no” vote for almost an hour, ultimately flipped his vote to yes. Only one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), voted against advancing the funding legislation.
NEARLY 160 HOUSE DEMOCRATS WANT TO IMPEACH NOEM BUT WON’T BITE ON TRUMP
The House is only in session six days leading up to Feb. 13, placing Congress in another make-or-break appropriations fight. If the SAVE Act does not get a vote in the Senate before then, it will likely anger Republicans and put Johnson right back in the crosshairs of a conservative rebellion when he tries to advance the next DHS deal.
Johnson said Monday that all Republicans want the SAVE Act signed into law but that they should not “play games” with government funding in response to that.