House unanimously passes DHS funding bill, ending 76-day shutdown

WASHINGTON (CN) — The monthslong government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security ended not with a bang but a whimper Thursday afternoon, as the House agreed to pass a Senate-approved budget for the agency by voice vote.

The unanimous nature of the decision stands in sharp contrast to weeks of uncertainty about the measure’s fate in the lower chamber, where some Republicans have opposed the bill’s language which set funding for immigration enforcement agencies to zero as part of lawmakers’ two-pronged budget reconciliation process.

Thursday’s vote marks the end of a 76-day shutdown at DHS, which not only stripped funding from immigration enforcement but also affected disaster aid and security services at airports nationwide.

Congress since late February has struggled to coalesce around a plan to fund DHS, after Senate Democrats scrapped a budget bill for the agency amid the Trump administration’s deadly immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Democratic lawmakers refused to consider any legislation that did not include major reforms to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

But after weeks of impasse, the upper chamber eventually agreed to a two-step plan to fund the agency that would see most of its programs funded via the usual appropriation process — but would set spending levels for ICE and Border Patrol through separate legislative mechanism known as budget reconciliation.

The House on Wednesday night passed a framework for the budget reconciliation process. But Republicans in the lower chamber chafed at the Senate appropriations bill’s move to isolate ICE and Border Patrol funding from the rest of the homeland security spending plan.

Those objections, however, were apparently not enough for House Republicans to demand a recorded vote on the Senate-passed bill.

Speaking to reporters following Thursday’s vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson repeated his complaint that the DHS appropriations bill had been “haphazardly drafted” and that it “orphaned” immigration enforcement programs. And he argued that House Republicans delayed a vote on the Senate’s funding bill until it could pass the budget reconciliation framework and ensure there was some mechanism under which ICE and Border Patrol would receive their funding.

“We passed the resolution first — that was critically important for us to do to ensure that we’re going to protect the homeland, even though Democrats are unwilling to do it,” said Johnson. “So now that that box is checked, we were allowed then to proceed and go through with the rest of it.”

Texas Representative Chip Roy, one of the main Republican detractors of the Senate-passed bill, told reporters that he would have voted no on the measure had it been brought to a recorded vote. But he added he hadn’t called for such a ballot because he knew it would not pass.

“We weren’t going to win that vote, so we decided to let it pass by voice vote,” Roy said.

It’s an anticlimactic ending for the protracted DHS shutdown, which lasted 76 days and affected agency programs such as federal disaster aid and airport security. Staffing shortages at the Transportation Security Administration during the initial weeks of the shutdown led to enormous lines at security that caused many travelers to miss flights.

Over the last two months, Democrats and Republicans have traded blame for the shutdown and attempted to enforce their demands, but ultimately neither side got exactly what they wanted.

Democrats, who at first refused to fund DHS without major reforms to immigration enforcement, have agreed to a funding plan that will see Republicans set the budgets of ICE and Border Patrol through a budget reconciliation process that is by design insulated from minority input. The initial framework for the GOP spending bill sets out roughly $70 billion for immigration enforcement for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s second term.

Republicans, on the other hand, had long said they would not consider any legislation that shaved ICE and Border Patrol funding off from the Homeland Security budget. And while House Republicans — especially vocal on this front — ultimately accepted such an approach, Johnson insisted his party had won out.

“Democrats got absolutely nothing for their political charade and shenanigans,” he said, arguing GOP lawmakers “repeatedly offered in good faith to negotiate” on funding immigration enforcement agencies.

Prior to the DHS shutdown, the Trump administration had attracted broad criticism for its immigration enforcement operations in cities across the country. In Minneapolis, federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, events that spurred Democratic calls to withhold funding for ICE and Border Patrol.

Lawmakers demanded a raft of reforms to immigration enforcement, including provisions forcing federal agents to use body-worn cameras and to remove face masks that conceal their identities. Congressional Democrats also backed legislation to restrict immigration operations in “sensitive” areas such as schools and hospitals, and a measure that would require agents to get a signed judicial warrant before forcibly entering homes.

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