Early Friday morning, the United States Senate agreed by voice vote to partially fund the Department of Homeland Security, excluding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as some parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
This represents a major step towards ending the now 42-day long shutdown impacting a number of critical government agencies, including TSA, FEMA, The Coast Guard, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Under the package approved by the Senate, these agencies would be funded as lawmakers continue to battle over ICE and CBP.
This comes immediately after President Donald Trump announced that he would be ordering the TSA to pay its employees immediately despite the lapse in funding.
TSA agents missed their first paycheck in mid-March, leading to increased call-out rates of more than 11 percent nationally, with some airports seeing rates as high as 40 percent.
Earlier this week, ICE agents were sent to the airports to help fill in the gaps, as the airports being shortstaffed had led to waits as long as four hours in some places.
According to NBC News, the White House did not respond to questions from the press regarding the details of the proposed move to restore pay.
For the Senate’s new spending package to take effect, it must now be approved by the House and signed into law by President Trump.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters as of Friday morning to “stay tuned” for the chamber’s next steps.
Although the House is scheduled to leave for a two-week break starting this weekend, Speaker Johnson indicated that votes on the package were “possible” during the day Friday.
[RELATED: DHS Shutdown Imminent as Lawmakers Fail to Reach Agreement Ahead of Valentine’s Day Deadline]
Despite the shutdown, ICE and CBP have continued to be able to receive funds as a result of a $75 billion appropriation included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Despite this, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the Democrats’ vote to allow the shutdown to begin “a shot across the bow to Republicans.”
“Democrats will not support a blank check for chaos,” he said at the time.
Friday, Minority Leader Schumer appeared to stand by this position, praising those in his party for “[holding] the line” on their objection to funding ICE and CBP without reforms.
“Democrats held firm in our position that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms and we will continue to fight for those reforms,” Schumer said, according to ABC News.
Majority Leader John Thune criticized Democrats on the chamber floor for what he identified as an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith.
“We could be standing here right now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms if the Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement,” Thune said. “But they didn’t, because it’s now clear to everyone, Democrats didn’t actually want a solution, they wanted an issue, politics over policy, self-interest over reform, pandering to their base over actually solving a problem.”
“It’s an appalling commentary on the state of the Democratic Party,” he added.
