House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) issued a joint statement on Wednesday that they would proceed with the Senate’s funding bill for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have precipitated the move by demanding congressional action in a social media post earlier on Wednesday.
“I am asking that the bill be on my desk no later than June 1,” Trump wrote. “We are going forward to fund our incredible Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Border Patrol through a process that doesn’t need radical left Democrat votes and bypasses the Senate filibuster.”
Funding for the department lapsed in February after Democrats demanded that any appropriations bill include reforms to the tactics used in deportation enforcement operations, including barring officers from wearing masks and new requirements for obtaining judicial warrants.
The ensuing partial government shutdown has been most acutely felt at airports, where large numbers of Transportation Security Administration employees have called in sick or quit due to lack of pay, causing massive delays at security checkpoints. Immigration enforcement officers, who have been the focus of the political dispute, have continued to receive pay under a previous spending measure.
The Senate passed a DHS funding bill on Friday by voice vote that did not include those reforms, though it also excluded funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agencies.
House Republicans initially balked at the bill and passed a continuing resolution on Friday to fully fund DHS for 60 days. Johnson and Thune blamed Democrats for blocking that effort.
“We operated under a belief that while our country is in the midst of an international armed conflict, Democrats might finally come to their senses and understand that defunding our homeland security agencies is beyond reckless and very dangerous,” the Republican leaders stated.
“While we hoped they would accept the 60-day continuing resolution to fund the department entirely so that bipartisan negotiations could continue, it is now abundantly clear that Democrats place allegiance to their radical left-wing base above all else,” they said.
Johnson and Thune said they would seek to fully fund DHS, including ICE and CBP, by repassing the Senate bill and resolving the immigration funding through the budget reconciliation process.
For procedural reasons, the Senate would likely have to re-pass its bill first before it could proceed to the House. The Senate next meets on Thursday at 7 a.m. and again on Monday.
