Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a rally against the Save America Act outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 18, 2026.
Nathan Posner | Anadolu | getty images
The Senate on Friday morning introduced a bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security to end the partial government shutdown that has disrupted air travel across the US.
After Republicans fought Democrats for weeks to remove funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement from any potential deal, the bill does exactly that. It would fund all of DHS except ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection, though it does not include changes to ICE’s immigration enforcement practices that Democrats had sought.
Now it will go to the House for final approval. The earliest a vote could happen is Friday as lawmakers look to leave Washington for a scheduled recess.
“This could have been accomplished weeks ago if Republicans had not stood in the way,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said from the Senate floor on Friday. “Democrats remain steadfast in our opposition that Donald Trump’s evil and deadly militias should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms.”
The Senate vote is an encouraging step toward ending the shutdown, which resulted in unpaid Transportation Security Administration agents and long lines at airports. The agreement comes just as lawmakers are leaving the city for a pre-planned two-week recess starting later this week.
Lawmakers scrambled for most of the week to reach a compromise before the recess, but as talks broke down late Thursday, Trump intervened and announced via Truth Social that he would pay TSA agents through executive order.
Trump posted, “Because the Democrats have recklessly created a true national crisis, I am using my authorities under the law to protect our great country, as I always will!” “Therefore, I am going to sign an order directing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markway Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA agents to respond to this emergency and immediately stop the Democrat chaos at the airports.”
The shutdown began in February, weeks after two US citizens were shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis as part of a federal immigration crackdown. Democrats demanded sweeping changes to ICE and DHS and refused to defund the department.
Friday’s vote largely ends that impasse, though it was far from a Kumbaya moment.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said in a statement that Democrats “remain intransigent and unreasonable” in their DHS funding demands.
“Congressional Democrats have caused real damage to the appropriations process by repeatedly forcing government shutdowns and refusing to defund entire agencies,” Collins said. “Refusing to defund ICE and Border Patrol makes our borders and our country less secure and sets a precedent they may one day regret.”
Republicans have vowed to restore funding to ICE through a second party-line legislative package using the Senate “budget reconciliation” process they used to pass last year’s tax and spending bill. Along with ICE funding, Republicans’ next measure could also include defense funding and a grab-bag of other issues, including the Save America Act, the Trump-backed voter-ID and noncitizen voting bills that have attracted the right wing of the GOP in recent months.
“This bill will focus on defunding ICE and other critical homeland security functions, as well as efforts to ensure America’s military and voter integrity are protected,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a post to X on Thursday.
Budget reconciliation is a procedural device that requires only a simple majority to pass – as opposed to the 60 votes typically required to overcome a filibuster in the Senate – provided it has some spending or revenue impact on its constituents.