Senate clears path to end Department of Homeland Security shutdown

WASHINGTON – With members of Congress eager to leave town soon for spring break, lawmakers in the Senate unanimously passed a bill on March 27 to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, securing a path to ending the weekslong shutdown that has left airports in turmoil.

The eleventh-hour agreement provides money for all of DHS except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. It still has to pass the House of Representatives before going to President Donald Trump's desk.

The late-night dealmaking came after Trump said earlier in the evening that he would pay Transportation Security Administration workers with or without the help of Congress. As hundreds of temporarily unpaid TSA workers have resigned since the shutdown started, and more have increasingly called off the job, wait times in airport security lines have hit historic highs in recent days.

Speaking from the Senate floor after 2 a.m. local time, a weary and frustrated Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, said Trump should "never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers."

"Republicans funded the Department of Homeland Security piecemeal. It's not the way to fund the department," he said. "But we were out of time."

The bill's success marked the culmination of a drawn-out political showdown that had tested Democrats' resolve, in a high-stakes midterm election year, to visibly push back against the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies.

The result, as is often the case with (increasingly frequent) government shutdowns, was a mixed bag.

For a party struggling to grasp levers of power in Washington, DC, the gambit shone a damning, bright spotlight on a controversial and politically complex issue for the GOP for more than a month. And it yielded some significant changes: Federal agents were drawn down from Minnesota after the highly scrutinized killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

The president ousted DHS Secretary Kristi Noem (though it was largely related to a separate controversy over expensive TV ads she oversaw). Her replacement publicly committed to better transparency – and at least some new guardrails on immigration enforcement.

Even the airport chaos wasn't enough to pressure Republicans and the White House to agree to some of the more significant reforms Democrats were clamoring for. A ban on mask-wearing and requirements for judicial warrants for immigration raids were among the demands left out of the final deal (though it did include some accountability measures for DHS).

Still, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, called it a "long-overdue" agreement and praised his party for sticking firmly together.

"In the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats were clear: No blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol," he said. "We held the line."

But once again, Senate Democrats ultimately became comfortable with ending a shutdown without the concessions they'd repeatedly said were nonnegotiable at the start.

While the legislation passed by unanimous consent doesn't fund ICE and Border Patrol, both divisions of DHS already received big cash infusions as part of the so-called "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" passed last year. That tax and spending law was approved through a special process for budget bills called reconciliation, which only requires simple majority support among lawmakers (instead of the more typical 60 votes in the Senate).

ICE and Customs and Border Protection have remained operational throughout the partial shutdown, which began in February. Republicans are planning to pass more funding for them via another reconciliation bill, which they hope to push through Congress before the upcoming midterm elections, which could return control of the House to Democrats.

Zachary Schermele is a congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.