The continued shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security on Monday surpasses the record 43-day governmentwide shutdown this fall.
The Senate approved a plan to end the six-week shutdown before it set another record, but House Republicans objected and offered an alternative with no path to becoming law.
With Congress at a stalemate again, lawmakers left Washington for the Easter and Passover holidays and are not set to return until the week of April 13.
That means the shutdown will drag on for at least a couple of more weeks while tens of thousands of Homeland Security Department employees continue working without pay and nonessential department functions remain paused.
The record airport security wait times caused by Transportation Security Administration agents calling out of work are likely to dissipate after President Trump signed an executive order Friday ordering the department to find another source of funding to pay them.
TSA agents are expected to start receiving paychecks early this week.
Democrats are unwilling to fully fund the department without major changes to immigration enforcement policies that they say are needed after federal agents killed two U.S. citizen protesters in Minneapolis early this year.
Weeks of bipartisan negotiations have not yielded a result, so Senate Republicans reluctantly agreed to pass a bill that funds the entire department except U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol.
That measure fully funded eight of the department’s 10 agencies, including TSA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Secret Service. It also funded the customs functions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“Since Democrats have made fiscal year 2026 the year they choose to repudiate one of their most basic responsibilities as members of Congress, to fund the government, this is what we have been reduced to,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican.
House Republicans deemed the partial funding bill unacceptable and instead passed an eight-week stopgap bill to fund the entire department.
“These are dangerous times in America. This is not the time to defund the police, to defund the Department of Homeland Security, at any level,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican.
Rep. James McGovern, Massachusetts Democrat, called that nonsense, given that Republicans approved $170 billion in multiyear funding for immigration enforcement in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act over the summer.
Those funds have allowed Mr. Trump to continue his mass deportation agenda during the shutdown, and for ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents to be paid.
“Stop the misinformation that somehow ICE is not being funded,” Mr. McGovern said.
Republicans countered that the legislation does not fund all of ICE or CBP.
“First-line staff are being mostly funded … but it leaves out civilian and support staff,” said Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Republican.
Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, the lead Democratic appropriator for the Homeland Security Department, told reporters that the administration has the authority to tap the bill’s funding to pay ICE and CBP support staff.
“They can do that anytime they want to,” he said.
Mr. Cuellar voted for the Republicans’ eight-week stopgap, along with two other Democrats, Reps. Donald Davis of North Carolina and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.
“Walking away from DHS funding will not fix anything about ICE, and it screws a lot of hardworking people,” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez said. “Ideological purity that empowers a broken system and hurts working people is not what I was sent to Congress to be part of.”
Other Democrats voted against the stopgap and criticized Republicans for blocking the Senate bill, which passed by voice vote without any objections.
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Massachusetts Democrat, said Republicans knew the move would continue the shutdown because the Senate had already left Washington.
“They’re saying we want status quo, that we are so eager to keep ICE going exactly as they’re operating in their reckless and unlawful and violent way, that’s our priority over that of the American people,” she said.
All Republicans supported the stopgap in the 213-203 vote, although some privately voiced concerns about the plan when their leadership pitched it.
“I don’t think the Senate’s going to take it right. And I thought that there was another way, and so I expressed my opinion,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez, Florida Republican, told The Washington Times. “But then the speaker called the play. He’s quarterback, and I’ll follow him. But I think there was a different way.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, called the eight-week stopgap measure funding the entire Homeland Security Department “the right thing, morally, legally and politically.”
The speaker said Mr. Thune agreed to have a Republican attend the Senate pro forma session Monday to try to pass the stopgap by unanimous consent.
A Democratic senator is expected to object. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said the stopgap “is dead on arrival in the Senate.”
“We’ve been clear from Day 1: 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,” Mr. Schumer said.
Senate Republicans have said they could use another filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package to backfill and add to any ICE and CBP allocations missing from the partial funding bill.
Mr. Gimenez agreed. He said reconciliation would allow Republicans to be “much more aggressive” and ensure Democrats can’t block the agency’s funding in the future.
Mr. Johnson has been pushing Republicans for months to take up a second reconciliation bill, but on Friday, he called it “a very difficult task” and “a high-risk gamble.”
Tensions are running high as Mr. Trump pressures Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster so they can reopen the Homeland Security Department and pass other priority Republican bills without Democratic support.
Mr. Thune has repeatedly said that Republicans lack the support to do that, but he has accused Democrats of repeatedly refusing to cut deals to retain a political issue for the November midterms.
Democrats say Republicans are refusing to stand up to Mr. Trump.
Leaving the Capitol on Friday night, Mr. Johnson wished Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator, a blessed Easter.
She responded politely, but after he walked away, she let out her true feelings about him: “Spineless.”
