The Senate failed to advance a House-passed spending measure Thursday for the Department of Homeland Security, all but ensuring funding will lapse on Saturday and cause a partial government shutdown.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are bracing for a prolonged shuttering of the department that oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement without a deal on Democratic demands to restrict President Donald Trump’s deportation operations and Congress’s recess next week.
A vote requiring support from 60 senators failed 52-47, mostly along party lines, in the GOP-controlled chamber. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was the lone Democratic “yes.”
“We’re not close,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters on the status of negotiations. “If it comes together in the next few days … [senators] have to be available to come back and vote.”
In earlier remarks on the Senate floor, Thune argued that a DHS shutdown offers Democrats “exactly zero changes to the status quo.”
“What is it … that Democrats want? Policy changes or is it a political issue?” he said. “Democrats are never going to get their full wish list. That’s not the way this works.”
Homeland Security is the only department not yet funded by Congress for the remainder of the fiscal year that runs through September, after Democrats last month forced Republicans to split the DHS from a broader spending agreement so the two sides could negotiate immigration enforcement policies. Thursday’s failed legislation would have funded DHS at current spending levels through September. Affected agencies that will shut down under the DHS beyond those handling deportations include the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Coast Guard.
The Trump administration’s conclusion of its enhanced Minnesota deportations, announced Thursday by White House border czar Tom Homan, failed to move the needle for Democrats as they stood firm on demands that policy changes be etched into law.
“Without legislation, what Tom Homan says today could be reversed tomorrow on a whim from Donald Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said. “Without legislation, Donald Trump could choose to put a rogue force in any city they want and have them operate without any guardrails.”
Despite implications of shuttering a department with sweeping national security duties, neither side faces imminent pressure to reach a compromise on ICE provisions that Democrats want, such as unmasking federal agents, requiring judicial warrants for deportations, and use-of-force rules mirroring those for local police.
HOMAN: TRUMP APPROVED WRAPPING UP ICE AND CBP OPERATION IN MINNESOTA
Trump’s deportation agenda, including ICE, will still be funded from the president’s mega tax law passed by Republicans last year. Democrats see withholding additional funds as their only leverage in the minority to force the administration’s hands and view their position as bolstered by public sentiment ahead of the midterm elections.
“The status quo cannot continue,” Schumer said. “We hear it from people back home and all over the country. People are angry, they’re afraid, they want accountability, and an end to the chaos.”