Capitol Hill Republicans Cave To Dems As DHS Shutdown Nears End

The record-setting Department of Homeland Security shutdown moved closer to ending Thursday after the Senate advanced a stopgap deal that funds most of the department while leaving President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement and border security operations on the sidelines.

The chamber approved the package by voice vote and sent it to the House, which isn’t expected to take it up until lawmakers return to Washington on April 13.

The vote came a day after GOP leaders embraced a two-track strategy to break the 48-day stalemate. Step one: cut a bipartisan deal with Democrats to get TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard and other DHS operations funded again. Step two: use the party-line budget reconciliation process to restore long-term money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and much of Customs and Border Protection without giving Democrats leverage.

The Senate bill would fund DHS broadly but would not provide new appropriations for ICE and would largely zero out Border Patrol funding, aside from $11 billion for customs functions. An additional $10 billion that had been teed up for ICE would not be funded under the measure.

Republicans say they’ll try to lock in three full years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol through reconciliation. Trump has demanded that bill on his desk by June 1.

“We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.

For Senate Majority Leader John Thune, it was a rerun. He pushed essentially the same framework last week, only to see House GOP leaders reject it as a “crap sandwich” because it punted ICE and CBP money into a future reconciliation fight. House Republicans floated a rival plan, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said it was “dead on arrival” in the Senate.

Thune argued the blame rests with Democrats, not late-stage GOP friction.

“I think this whole where we are is just a regrettable place. We have the Democrats who are holding the appropriations process hostage and their anti-law enforcement, open borders, defund the police wing is the ascendant wing,” Thune said. “And there, I think everybody’s afraid of them, and so we’re stuck in a spot that’s just not good for the country, the future of the appropriations process, or, for that matter, the future of the Senate.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared to soften Wednesday after Trump endorsed the two-part approach, opening the door to the House taking up the Senate bill despite last week’s fury.

Still, Republicans acknowledge the hard part may be next. Reconciliation requires a simple majority, but it also forces the GOP to agree on offsets and what else gets added to the package. Some lawmakers want to include supplemental funding for the Iran war, affordability provisions, tariff-related items and pieces of the election integrity-focused SAVE America Act.

RELATED: New Poll Shows Overwhelming Support For Voter ID And SAVE Act

Democrats, meanwhile, are claiming victory even though their demands to rewrite immigration enforcement tactics were not adopted.

“Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered,” Schumer said Wednesday. “We were clear from the start: fund critical security, protect Americans, and no blank check for reckless ICE and Border Patrol enforcement.

“We were united, held the line, and refused to let Republican chaos win.”

RELATED: NEW: House Republicans Reject Senate GOP’s ‘Garbage’ DHS Deal With Democrats

The Senate bill could still hit turbulence in the House. Conservatives have already signaled opposition, arguing the deal effectively defunds immigration enforcement while the shutdown’s unpaid weeks have strained morale across DHS.

“Let’s make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again,” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., wrote Wednesday. “If that’s the vote, I’m a NO.”

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