President Trump will soon sign an executive order to pay all Department of Homeland Security employees, as a congressional deal to end the shutdown hits roadblocks from House Republicans.
It is the seventh week of the record-breaking DHS shutdown. The president’s announcement on Thursday about helping employees who have been working without pay came after the Senate passed a bill for a second time to fund DHS — but without money for immigration enforcement that Democrats are blocking.
“Where we are is just a regrettable place,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. He had returned to Washington during the two-week congressional recess for Passover and Easter to send the bill back to the House.
“We have the Democrats who are holding the appropriations process hostage,” he said. “Their anti-law-enforcement, open-borders, defund-the-police wing is the ascendant wing, and I think everybody’s afraid of them. And so we’re stuck in a spot that’s just not good for the country.”
Republicans tried to compromise with Democrats on immigration enforcement policy changes they demanded after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens protesting ICE in Minneapolis early this year, but the two sides could never come to terms on a deal.
The partial DHS funding bill does not include any of the Democrats’ demands, which Senate Republicans view as a win.
But House Republicans were still upset about not funding immigration enforcement, so they passed a substitute amendment replacing the Senate’s partial DHS funding deal with a stopgap measure to fund the entire department through May 22.
Mr. Thune engaged in “a number of conversations” with President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, since that Friday vote. He ultimately convinced them that the stopgap bill could not get past Senate Democrats’ filibuster and the partial DHS funding bill is the only viable option.
“You have to just continue to define reality for people,” the Senate GOP leader said.
Mr. Johnson and Mr. Thune issued a joint statement on Wednesday announcing Congress would fund DHS “on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process.”
While the Senate has completed one track in passing the partial DHS funding bill, a House vote is unlikely to occur before the chamber returns from the recess on April 14.
House GOP leaders held a conference call with their members on Thursday, where some Republicans reportedly floated waiting until the reconciliation measure with the immigration enforcement funding passes before approving the rest of the DHS funding.
The partial DHS funding bill fully funds eight DHS agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration, 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 but not Border Patrol. The measure does not include any money for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Senate Republicans reluctantly agreed to that because ICE and CBP already have a separate stream of funding for immigration enforcement that Republicans included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer.
That money has been used to pay ICE and CBP agents during the shutdown, and Mr. Trump signed an executive order last week to tap it to pay TSA agents as well.
Republicans are planning to use a second filibuster-proof budget reconciliation package to backfill budget holes and provide ICE and CBP with enough immigration enforcement funding to last through the remainder of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
Mr. Trump wants that bill on his desk no later than June 1. He said Republicans are unified “moving forward on a plan that will reload funding for our FANTASTIC Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement Officers.”
Mr. Thune said he hopes the existing funding for ICE and CBP and the reconciliation plan to top those accounts off “will be compelling enough for enough House members to support funding the other agencies in the department.”
Some House Republicans are not convinced.
Rep. Warren Davidson, Ohio Republican, panned the deal on social media as “surrender” to Democrats.
“It’s inconceivable that the ‘Republican-controlled’ United States Senate has now moved legislation explicitly defunding ICE and CBP TWICE in one week,” he said.
Democrats, meanwhile, are attacking House Republicans for their inability to end the shutdown on Thursday. During the chamber’s pro forma session, the House received the Senate bill but did not act on it.
“House Republicans seem to be stuck in an infinite loop of incompetence,” said Rep. Brad Schneider, Illinois Democrat. “After announcing a compromise agreement yesterday, the Senate gave House Republicans a second chance today to fund DHS through September. Speaker Johnson squandered it.”
