DHS shutdown to continue after House rejects Senate deal

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(The Center Square) – Republicans in the U.S. House quashed any hopes that the 42-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security would end Friday.

The Senate’s last-minute deal early Friday to fund all DHS agencies except ICE and parts of Border Patrol hit a wall with House Republicans, who viewed it as a capitulation to Democrats.

“What the Senate just sent over to the House is so laughably bad, we’re rejecting it out of hand,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, announced. “[W]e’re not going to move this Senate bill. We’re going to move something better and send it back to the Senate.”

House leadership is currently eyeing a 60-day funding stopgap, known as a Continuing Resolution, for DHS so that cash-strapped agencies like TSA and FEMA can finally pay workers.

Senators, however, have already left town for two weeks, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who had hoped that the House would pass the compromise and end the shutdown.

Unlike other DHS agencies, ICE and CBP never needed funds from the Homeland Security bill to continue their operations. Both have simply dipped into the roughly $70 billion pots they each received last year from Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill. 

Thune’s idea was for the House to pass the Senate’s funding deal, and then use another party-line budget reconciliation bill to give ICE and CBP their fiscal year 2026 money – minus the plethora of immigration enforcement reforms Democrats had demanded in the original Homeland Security bill.

This plan failed to mollify House Republicans, however, many of whom called the tactic “cowardly” and “pathetic.”

House Republicans are demanding their Senate colleagues return to D.C., with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., saying senators “may want to book a return flight for your boss. Our work here isn’t finished.”

The House was also scheduled to leave for recess, but lawmakers were notified Friday morning that votes on the Homeland Security funding deal “are possible today and throughout the weekend.” 

If Congress is unable to agree on a deal by the end of Saturday, the shutdown will break all records for the longest government shutdown, partial or full, in American history.