Homeland Security Dept. to shut down this weekend as Senate Democrats block funds

Senate Democrats blocked two Department of Homeland Security funding bills Thursday, saying they will not give immigration enforcement agencies another penny without an overhaul of the methods agents use to carry out the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.

The impasse means the department will shut down at midnight Friday, when its current stopgap funding expires. Most department functions are considered essential and will continue with a smaller subset of employees forced to work without pay.

Employees deemed nonessential will be furloughed.

“The employees who work there shouldn’t be held hostage in a government shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican.

Democrats say their blockade is an effort to fight for the American people who are angry at the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents are carrying out President Trump’s deportation agenda.

“No American, regardless of party, supports having their taxpayer dollars fund a secret police force that operates without transparency or accountability,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

The shutdown, however, impacts far more than ICE and CBP, which have separate funding streams to continue deportation operations.

Other agencies within the department, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Secret Service, will have to halt nonessential functions.

Democrats have no plan for ending the shutdown, short of the Republicans and the Trump administration accepting their demands. They say their proposals would force ICE and CBP to be held to the same standards as local law enforcement.

“Is it really the case that the Trump administration wants to defend and continue defending ICE agents who gas little babies, who sweep through neighborhoods and pick up American citizens and who shoot people in the back in the middle of the day?” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat.

White House border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that the Trump administration would withdraw remaining ICE and CBP forces in Minnesota, where many of the violent incidents have taken place.

Democrats welcomed the withdrawal but dismissed it as “lip service” without broader legislative changes.

“Do they just redeploy to some other city to harass a bunch of citizens?” said Sen. Brian Schatz, Hawaii Democrat.

The legislative changes Democrats are seeking include forcing ICE to end “indiscriminate” arrests; requiring its agents to wear body cameras and identification but no masks; obtaining judicial warrants to make arrests on private property; and limiting the public spaces it conducts enforcement to exclude areas near schools, courts, medical facilities and other “sensitive” locations.

The White House this week provided a counterproposal to Democrats’ demands, and negotiations are expected to continue despite the partisan finger-pointing. Democrats said they plan to send a new offer back to the White House this weekend.

In the meantime, rank-and-file lawmakers left Washington for a previously scheduled congressional recess. Several senators headed directly to an international security conference in Munich.

Congress will return Feb. 23, absent a breakthrough in the negotiations.

“We have let people know to be available to get back here if there’s some sort of deal they strike to vote on it,” Mr. Thune said, but he suggested he does not expect an agreement to come together that quickly.

Mr. Schatz said Republicans are “in a bubble” and will realize that the depth of anger at ICE extends beyond liberals when they talk with constituents back home during the break.

“It’s going to take them maybe another week to figure out how pissed off their own voters are about the idea of masked police force terrorizing communities,” he said.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released Thursday found that 62% of Americans say the Trump administration has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities. A question about federal law enforcement’s response to protests elicited a similar 61% response: “gone too far.”

A majority of respondents also had an unfavorable opinion of ICE, including 89% of Democrats, 66% of independents and 24% of Republicans.

Mr. Thune said that, much like the fall shutdown ostensibly over health care, Democrats seem more interested in having a political issue than in pursuing a policy solution.

“We will see in the course of the next few days how serious they are,” he said of the expected Democratic counteroffer.

The Senate’s 52-47 procedural vote fell short of the 60 votes needed to clear a filibuster. Mr. Schumer called it “a shot across the bow to Republicans [showing] Democrats will not support a blank check for chaos.”

Republicans attempted to bring up the House-passed bill that Democratic leaders initially agreed to as part of broader spending negotiations. The measure could have been amended if it had advanced.

Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has consistently opposed shutting down any part of government, was the only Democrat to vote in favor of proceeding to the bill.

He said blocking the measure does not defund ICE, as his fellow Democrats want, because Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act provided the agency with a separate $75 billion, multiyear funding stream for immigration enforcement.

Mr. Fetterman said Democrats who vote to block funding for the Homeland Security Department are “probably afraid of the base.”

The annual appropriations bill provides ICE with another $10 billion for fiscal 2026.

“Clearly, the White House and Republicans are not serious about reform,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat. “If they continue down this path, then they’re the ones deciding that there will be no additional funds for this year.”

The House-passed measure, which few Democrats supported, included some bipartisan proposals to increase training for immigration enforcement agents and to provide $20 million for body cameras, though without language mandating their use.

The House voted before the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen protesting immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. After federal agents killed Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats pulled out of the deal and pushed for a more sweeping overhaul of ICE and CBP policies.

As a Jan. 30 funding deadline approached, Republicans agreed to renegotiate the bill and reluctantly accepted Democrats’ insistence that a stopgap measure to buy time for those talks last no longer than two weeks.

Republicans tried Thursday to secure unanimous consent from all 100 senators to pass another two-week extension of the stopgap funding, but Democrats objected.

Some Democrats had suggested splitting up the bill and funding all agencies except ICE and CBP. Republicans shot that down, and even Mr. Schumer said that was unnecessary.

“We should fund the whole package,” he said. “All Republicans have to do is meet our requests and negotiate in a serious way, and we can pass the whole thing.”