Washington — The Senate is voting Thursday on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, facing an end-of-week deadline to avoid another partial government shutdown. But a deal that Democrats and Republicans have sought to reform the administration’s immigration enforcement operation has remained elusive.
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, is set to lapse at 12 a.m. Saturday. And although Democrats and the White House have traded proposals in recent days, the standoff appears unlikely to come to an end in the near future.
Ahead of the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday said Senate Democrats will vote no, “because we will not support a bill that fails to make any progress on reining in ICE and stopping the violence.”
The White House sent a legislative proposal to fund DHS late Wednesday, days after Democrats sent their own draft bill. Democratic leaders were quick to dismiss an earlier version of the counterproposal from the White House this week, calling it “incomplete and insufficient.” On Thursday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told CBS News that while he’s still reviewing the proposal, “my preliminary assessment of it is that it falls short of the type of dramatic changes necessary in order to change ICE’s out-of-control behavior.”
Last week, in a letter to their GOP counterparts, Democratic leadership laid out a list of their demands for reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is overseen by DHS. Since 37-year-old Alex Pretti was shot and killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis last month, congressional Democrats have demanded changes to ICE in exchange for their votes to fund DHS.
Democrats want to restrict immigration agents from wearing masks, require them to wear identification and body cameras and standardize their uniforms and equipment. They also want to ban racial profiling, require judicial warrants to enter private property and bar immigration enforcement at medical facilities, schools, child care facilities, churches, polling places and courts. And they pushed to impose “reasonable” use-of-force standards, allow state and local jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute “excessive force” and introduce safeguards into the detention system.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said at a news conference this week that “there have been good-faith efforts” toward an agreement on how to fund DHS. But he acknowledged they’ll likely need more time than the current funding extension allows.
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“I think it’s important that we allow those conversations to go forward and see if there might be a path toward getting an outcome that would fund the Department of Homeland Security,” Thune said. “It’s a work in progress, but I would hope that the Democrats here in the Senate, if it takes more time — which I believe it will — would be amenable to allowing us to get an extension of the continuing resolution to allow more time for those negotiations to continue.”
But Schumer said in a post on X on Wednesday morning that Democrats will not support a continuing resolution “to extend the status quo.”
“We’re 3 days away from a DHS shutdown and Republicans have not gotten serious about negotiating a solution that reins in ICE and stops the violence,” Schumer said.
Both chambers are scheduled to be on recess next week. Thune said he told senators to remain flexible heading into the weekend.
Along with funding for the immigration enforcement agencies, DHS also oversees the Coast Guard, FEMA and TSA, among other agencies and programs that could be impacted by a lapse in funding. Because ICE and CBP received an influx of funds in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, their operations would continue.
Alternate avenues to approve some funding appeared to be off the table. GOP Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, who is part of negotiations, closed the door on any proposals that separate funding for immigration enforcement agencies from the larger DHS bill. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, introduced a bill Wednesday to provide full-year funding for DHS operations unrelated to immigration.
But Britt called this proposal “unserious.”
The impasse over DHS funding led to a four-day-long partial government shutdown earlier this month. Lawmakers ultimately agreed to fund every government agency except DHS until the end of the fiscal year, while extending DHS funding for two weeks to buy them more time to negotiate on reforms to immigration enforcement.
