Shutdown drags on: House votes to fully fund DHS after ‘inappropriate’ Senate deal
The House of Representatives on Friday rejected the Senate’s deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security without funding border security, instead voting to fully fund the department until May 22.
The House passed a continuing resolution to fully fund DHS for 60 days on a mostly party-line vote with three Democrats defecting to join Republicans.
“We’re not going to split apart two of the most important agencies in the government and leave them hanging like that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Friday night. “We just couldn’t do it.”
The House’s move will indefinitely extend the shutdown. Senators left the capital for a two-week Easter recess after the vote early Friday morning, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said a bill that doesn’t limit ICE funding is “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
As travelers face multi-hour lines at major U.S. airports, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday ensuring that TSA agents will be paid during the now-43-day shutdown.
The One Big, Beautiful Bill funded ICE and CBP through 2029, but ICE, CBP, and Homeland Security Investigations support staff are still working without pay.
HSI investigates child trafficking and missing children.
Speaker Mike Johnson called the Senate bill, passed at 3 a.m. Friday, a “joke.” The Senate measure would reopen DHS without funding ICE or Customs and Border Patrol, a deal that House Republicans say would restore the open border policies of the Biden administration.
Trump told Fox News on Friday that the Senate bill to reopen DHS was “inappropriate.”
“Democrats want to let illegals come into the country, criminals, murderers, every kind of criminal you can imagine,” Trump said later to reporters. “The Republicans just don’t want to have spent the better part of this year trying to get these criminals out, and the Democrats want to have them come in. And we can’t let that happen.”
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain encouraged the Senate to “come back and at least take a vote.”
But the House bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
Republicans would need 60 votes to pass the continuing resolution to fund DHS, and Schumer has insisted Democrats will not vote for DHS funding without limits on ICE.
“We’ve been clear from day one: Democrats will fund critical homeland security functions—but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms,” Schumer said.
House Republicans are urging Senators to return from their home states to reopen DHS.
“Senators must return to Washington immediately, finish the job, and get this bill to President Trump!” Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., wrote on X.
“By passing a Continuing Resolution, we ensured that the men and women who work to keep Americans safe get paid and the safety of the American people remains the top priority,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisc., said. “The Senate needs to swiftly act to pass this clean Continuing Resolution to ensure daily border security and ICE operations continue.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]