Senate races to fund ICE and Border Patrol amid shutdown fight

The Senate spent Wednesday night trying to break a shutdown logjam over the Department of Homeland Security by advancing money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the two agencies at the center of Washington’s border fight. The effort marked the first major move toward reopening DHS after a shutdown that has stretched beyond two months and left the department’s core operations caught between routine funding and a broader immigration battle.

The immediate dispute is over H.R. 7744, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2026, which Congress.gov shows the Senate received on March 9. The House already passed the bill 221-209, but Senate Democrats have pushed a different approach: reopen DHS without ICE and Border Patrol in the package, and add guardrails on ICE while negotiations continue. Republicans have countered that they want to fully fund DHS and border enforcement, folding the immigration agencies into a broader package tied to President Donald Trump’s agenda.

That clash has left the chamber in a procedural maze. Senate Democrats said they would offer amendments aimed at lowering health care costs and other everyday expenses, hoping to force a policy contrast rather than simply clear the way for the GOP plan. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer accused Republicans of bending the knee to Trump, a sign of how quickly a funding dispute has become a test of party loyalty as much as budgeting.

The stakes extend well beyond Capitol Hill. More than 260,000 DHS personnel have been affected by the shutdown, with tens of thousands facing financial strain. Multiple agencies inside the department, including the Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Coast Guard and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, have been cited as affected. By late March, more than 480 TSA officers had quit, according to reporting from a House hearing, underscoring how quickly the impasse has begun to erode staffing at airports nationwide and other sensitive posts.

DHS officials warned in April that the department could run out of money to pay staff again in early May if the shutdown continued. Earlier in the crisis, the Senate had already shown overwhelming bipartisan support for a funding path without immigration provisions, when a procedural vote passed 98-2. But House Republicans have refused to take up the bipartisan reopening measure until the Senate advances ICE and Border Patrol money as well.

The fight has revived an old pattern. In 2015, DHS funding battles also turned on immigration-related provisions, with lawmakers eventually clearing the way for a bill stripped of the objections that had frozen it. This time, the question is whether Congress can keep border politics from swallowing basic agency operations, or whether even routine funding for homeland security has become hostage to the larger immigration war.