Homeland Security shutdown reverberates in empty Capitol

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Homeland Security Department remained unfunded Monday morning as the sun rose on a deserted Washington, where both houses of Congress have skipped town after a plan to end a monthlong shutdown at the agency ran into a roadblock in the House.

The lower chamber on Friday night passed a stopgap budget aimed at funding DHS through late May, a measure that came after House Republicans rejected a Senate compromise to greenlight parts of the agency’s budget without cash for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.

But the timing of the House’s alternative funding patch, approved just hours before the Senate began a two-week recess, all but guaranteed another week of a DHS shutdown that has resulted in major disruptions to U.S. air travel and left hundreds of federal workers without pay.

Funding for the Homeland Security Department lapsed in late February, after Senate Democrats refused to approve an additional budget for the agency tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign — a nationwide initiative that has seen federal agents crack down on protesters, attack journalists and in at least two cases kill American citizens. Democrats said they would not vote for a DHS funding bill without significant reforms to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

Republicans were largely resistant to Democratic demands, and negotiations remained at an impasse until last week, when the upper chamber early Friday morning agreed unanimously to pass a DHS budget that peeled off appropriations for certain ICE enforcement operations.

However, it quickly became clear the compromise would be a nonstarter for House Republicans, who resoundingly approve of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and balked at efforts to hamper ICE and Border Patrol.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday called the Senate deal a “joke,” and other congressional GOP lawmakers slammed the Senate for dropping what they see as an unacceptable DHS funding plan in their laps before jetting out of Washington for a two-week recess.

“We’re going to send back a bill that’s responsible to the American people,” Texas Representative Chip Roy said last week.

The House’s proposed continuing resolution, passed 213-203 on Friday night, would fully fund DHS for eight weeks. While the Senate plan would fund parts of the agency through Sept. 30, the House stopgap keeps the whole department online through May 22.

Three Democrats — Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, North Carolina Representative Don Davis and Washington Representative Marie Glusenkamp Perez — voted alongside all House Republicans to approve the continuing resolution.

Republicans in Congress guaranteed roughly $75 million in funding for ICE last year as part of the president’s marquee “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a move lawmakers have said blunted the impacts of the DHS shutdown on immigration enforcement. But House leadership has nonetheless complained that cutting some of ICE’s enforcement budget — a plan floated by some Senate Democrats since last month — would betray the White House’s immigration agenda.

Though immigration enforcement operations have not been severely affected by the DHS shutdown, other agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration have been hit hard. Hundreds of TSA agents have left the airport security office, and staffing issues have caused major delays at airports across the country. Trump last week deployed ICE agents to some airports to assist TSA workers amid the chaos.

And while the proposed DHS budget stopgap is through the House, it will now need to clear the Senate, where Democrats have already signaled opposition.

“A 60-day CR that locks in the status quo is dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement on Friday. “We’ve been clear from day one: Democrats will fund critical Homeland Security functions — but we will not give a blank check to Trump’s lawless and deadly immigration militia without reforms. “

It’s unclear whether Senate Republican leadership will call lawmakers back to Washington early to vote on the House-passed budget patch. The upper chamber is on recess until April 13.

Democrats have demanded any DHS spending bill include reforms to immigration enforcement that require federal agents to unmask, wear body cameras and clearly identify themselves. Lawmakers have also pushed for legislation restricting immigration enforcement operations in certain “sensitive” areas and language that forces ICE agents to acquire signed judicial search warrants before forcibly entering homes.

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