Senate averts shutdown after bipartisan deal to freeze ICE
Benjamin Weiss
WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate on Friday appeared to have sidestepped an extended partial government shutdown as it approved a tranche of federal budget bills and agreed to temporarily freeze funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
It’s a major victory for Democrats, who bought time to negotiate their list of demands to reform U.S. immigration enforcement agencies — and it comes after an hourslong blockade from one Republican senator saw proceedings in the upper chamber grind to a screeching halt.
Friday marked the deadline for a short-term funding resolution which brought federal programs back online this past fall after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. With a House vote on the Senate-passed plan still days away, some programs may go briefly unfunded through the weekend until the lower chamber approves it.
Until this week, the Senate seemed on track to easily pass the package of six remaining appropriations bills funding the government for the 2026 fiscal year, including legislation that set spending limits for Homeland Security. But things changed over the weekend after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis — the second such killing of an American citizen by federal agents this month.
Following Pretti’s death, Democrats demanded Republicans peel Homeland Security funding off the appropriations package. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer promised the remaining five bills would “sail” through the upper chamber if GOP leaders agreed to drop the agency’s budget from consideration.
And Democrats have demanded that Congress rework Homeland Security funding to include a list of policy riders aimed at reining in federal law enforcement. Among the proposed reforms are language forcing federal agents to wear body cameras and barring them from wearing masks that conceal their identities. Democrats have also demanded an end to so-called “roving patrols” of Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and have urged the adoption of a uniform code of conduct for immigration enforcement.
Republicans, though, were reluctant to completely strike the Homeland Security budget and instead struck a deal with Democrats that extended funding at current levels for two weeks.
But ahead of an expected vote on the five-bill appropriations package and Homeland Security stopgap, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham threw a wrench in the works, blockading proceedings as he demanded that senators take up a laundry list of additional policy riders.
Graham said that he would maintain his hold on the appropriations bills until the chamber voted on legislation to criminalize “sanctuary cities” — cities across the country that limit or refuse to cooperate with the federal government on immigration enforcement.
The South Carolina Republican’s blockade forced the Senate to recess Thursday night without voting. But on Friday, he softened his approach, instead demanding that the chamber commit to holding a vote on his sanctuary cities bill.
“We’re going to have a vote in the United States Senate in two weeks as to whether or not we should criminalize the acts of local and state officials who willfully disobey laws on the books because it’s good politics for them,” Graham said.
Following the end of Graham’s hold, the Senate on Friday night approved the stopgap alongside the five other appropriations bills on a 71-29 vote. The spending package funds financial services programs, the Labor Department, the Transportation Department and federal housing programs, among other things.
Some Republican lawmakers appeared open to several of the reforms urged by Democrats.
Graham himself said Thursday that he thought more training and body camera mandates for federal agents “make sense,” adding that adopting some of the proposed reforms for ICE and Border Patrol agents was “the best legislative solution.” But the senator argued that addressing sanctuary city policies was a more pressing issue.
“We should do three things: Fund DHS, make reforms and end sanctuary city policies,” he said.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, one of the sharpest Republican critics of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her approach to immigration enforcement, told reporters Thursday that he supported the proposed Democratic reforms save for the anti-masking policy, which he said could open federal agents up to doxxing.
Democrats, for their part, have argued that the proposed Homeland Security reforms are common-sense policy that bring federal law enforcement in line with what’s expected of local and state police.
“There is nothing in these reforms that requires ICE to do anything different than your local and state police departments are required to do right now,” Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal told reporters Thursday. “There’s nothing radical about them — in fact, they are the modus operandi of the police departments in your town and your state.”
The House, which must now concur with the Senate plan, was out of Washington this week for a planned recess. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday night that he would not bring his chamber back over the weekend to vote on the spending legislation, telling reporters that the “earliest floor action” in the House would be on Monday.
“We may inevitably be in a short shutdown situation,” said the top House Republican. “But the House is going to do its job.”