The Senate took the first steps in a new effort to reopen the Department of Homeland Security early Thursday, voting to adopt a budget plan that would fund ICE and Border Patrol over Democratic objections and sending it to the House.
The entire department has been shut down since mid-February as Democrats have demanded policy changes in the wake of fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents.
Republicans are now trying to fund the two agencies through the complicated, time-consuming process called budget reconciliation, a maneuver that they also used to pass President Donald Trump’s package of tax and spending cuts last year with no Democratic votes.
“We have a multistep process ahead of us, but at the end Republicans will have helped ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-SD.
The budget process only requires a simple majority in the Senate, bypassing filibuster rules that require Republicans to find 60 votes on most bills when they only hold 53 seats.
But it also comes with increased scrutiny from the Senate parliamentarian and a long, open-ended series of amendment votes at the beginning and the end of the process.
The Senate held the first series of votes through the night, starting Wednesday evening and into early Thursday morning, with Democrats proposing amendments to lower health care expenses and other costs in an effort to contrast with Republicans’ focus on Trump’s campaign of immigration enforcement.
“Instead of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into ICE and Border Patrol, Republicans should be working with Democrats to lower out-of-pocket costs,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY.
A lengthy effort to reopen Homeland Security
Once the House approves the framework and the Senate Parliamentarian approves it, the two chambers can then move to pass the measure.
The Senate has already voted on a bipartisan basis to reopen the rest of the department, but Republican leaders in the House say they won’t take that bill up until the Senate shows progress toward funding ICE and Border Patrol, as well.
The $70 billion budget resolution would fund the two agencies for three years, through the rest of Trump’s term.
Thune and other GOP leaders say they hope to keep the bill narrowly focused on ICE and Border Patrol and get it to Trump’s desk by the end of the month, along with the rest of Homeland Security Department funding that has already passed the Senate.
But that could prove difficult as many in the party see the budget bill as the last real chance this year to enact their priorities.
Republicans in both the Senate and House have pushed to add other items, including money for farmers and Trump’s proof of citizenship voting bill, called the SAVE America Act.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., briefly held up the vote series late Wednesday, frustrated that the bill would not include parts of the SAVE America Act or other legislation.
“This is the last train leaving the station,” Kennedy said, predicting they would not be able to pass any other major bills ahead of November’s midterm elections.
But he withdrew his objections and allowed the voting to proceed.
Democrats say reform needed at ICE and Border Patrol after shootings
Democrats say any funding bill for the Homeland Security Department should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.
After federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations went nowhere, and the DHS funding lapsed with no agreement on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.
In March, the Senate passed the legislation by voice vote that would separate out ICE and Border Patrol and fund the rest of the department, including the Transportation Security Administration as security lines grew long at some airports.
But Republicans in the House refused to consider it, saying they wouldn’t support any bill that didn’t include money for immigration enforcement.
Congress then left town for a two-week recess, leaving the issue unresolved.
Trump has used executive orders to pay some department salaries in the meantime, but the future of those paychecks is uncertain.
Potential roadblocks in the House
During the recess, Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that they would pursue a two-track approach — pass the Senate bill that includes most of the department’s funding through regular order and use the party-line bill to pass ICE and CBP funding.
Weeks later, though, Johnson has still not said when the House will take up the Senate’s legislation that would the rest of the department.
And it is unclear if members of his GOP conference will unite behind the narrowed budget bill as some House Republicans have argued, like Sen. Kennedy, that they should add other priorities to the legislation.
Johnson said this week that the sequencing of the two bills is important. House lawmakers don’t want to see the rest of the department funded without ICE and Border Patrol, he said.
“We’ll get there,” Johnson said. “Just stay tuned.”
