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

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

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

Employees deemed non-essential 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 Patrol 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 CPB, which have a separate stream of funding they can use to continue deportation operations. 

Other DHS agencies, 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 non-essential functions.

Democrats have no plan for ending the shutdown, short of the Republicans and the Trump administration accepting their demands — proposals they say would force ICE and CPB 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 CPB forces in Minnesota, where many of the violent incidents have taken place.

Democrats welcomed the move, 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; require its agents to wear body cameras and identification and ban masks; obtain judicial warrants to make arrests on private property; and limit 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 DHS negotiations before then.

“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 suggested he does not expect one to come together that quickly. 

Mr. Schatz said Republicans are “in a bubble” and it will be good for them to go home and get yelled at by constituents over the break so they can understand the depth of anger at ICE extends beyond progressives. 

“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 62% of Americans believe 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 produced a similar 61% response of “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 much like the shutdown last fall ostensibly over health care, Democrats seem much more interested in having a political issue than 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 on Thursday fell short of the 60 votes needed to clear a filibuster, which Mr. Schumer called “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 DHS bill that Democratic leaders initially agreed to as part of broader spending negotiations. The measure could have been amended if it had advanced.

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, 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 provided the agency with a separate $75 billion, multi-year funding stream for immigration enforcement. 

Mr. Fetterman said Democrats who vote to block the DHS funding are “probably afraid of the base.”

The annual DHS appropriations bill that is being held up 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, did include some bipartisan proposals to increase training for immigration enforcement agents and $20 million for body cameras, although without language mandating their use.

The House vote occurred 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 CPB policies.

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

Republicans tried on Thursday to get 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 DHS bill and funding all agencies but ICE and CPB. 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.”