Lawmakers fail to reach DHS funding deal

WASHINGTON—Senators are leaving town on Thursday, but with notice to be ready to return to Washington within 48 hours’ notice. At midnight Friday, temporary funding for the Department of Homeland Security will expire, yet senators failed to reach a funding deal with each other or the White House on Thursday.

“There is no way that you can’t say that we’re working in good faith,” said Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., who has led negotiations on DHS funding, addressing Democrats in a floor speech. “We want to continue this conversation, but yet you’re penalizing a TSA agent … so you can posture politically. I’m over it.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of DHS, already received $75 billion in advance funding from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Customs and Border Protection was also already funded through the rest of the year. If DHS shuts down on Friday, employees would still get paychecks by Feb. 26, but the amounts would be halved. Much of the department is considered essential, including FEMA, the Coast Guard, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and TSA.

On Thursday afternoon, Republicans submitted a request to temporarily fund DHS for another two weeks to allow more time for negotiations. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., objected to that proposal.

“Our caucus was confused and frustrated by how long it took for our Republican colleagues to come to the table and start discussions,” he said in response to Britt. “During the first week of that two-week continuing resolution, there was no clarity over who we were supposed to be negotiating with. Was it Senate Republicans? Was it the White House? And in fact, it wasn’t until last night, literally on the verge of the shutdown, that we got our first offer of text from the White House, far too late to be able to engage in any compromise before the deadline.”

Over the past two weeks, both parties have traded paper on their top priorities. House and Senate Democrats on Feb. 4 issued 10 demands that included requiring federal agents to carry IDs, not wear masks, and obtain judicial warrants before making arrests. The Democrats did not turn those demands into a proposed bill until Sunday night. Then on Wednesday, the White House weighed in with a counterproposal that hasn’t been made public.

Congress funded 96% of the federal government last month after it separated DHS funding from a “minibus” package of legislation that funded five other departments. When the delayed DHS bill came up for a vote on Thursday, it failed 52-47. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to vote for it.

“There’s a back and forth on all the major issues. Now there’s some, obviously, red lines that Democrats have and that the White House has,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters after the vote on Thursday. “From what we’ve seen in terms of the paper trading that’s been going on, is that the White House has moved a good long way from where they started.”

The congressional Democratic leaders, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, called the counterproposal incomplete and insufficient. They said they do not trust promises from the White House unless they are submitted as legislative text. Lawmakers from both parties have also said they won’t negotiate the bill’s list of demands in public.

The House and the Senate are out of town next week on a scheduled recess. Thune said he’s given notice to members to return if a deal materializes, but he was pessimistic about that happening. Other members argued they should stay in town to keep negotiating.

“We have to be here to be able to get things resolved,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told reporters. “That’s the easiest way to resolve it, is to say no one walks away from the table. … I think the hard part is everybody’s stuck right now and trying to figure it out. Democrats have asked for things that are not reasonable.”

One of those unreasonable demands, according to Lankford, is the requirement for immigration enforcement agents to obtain judicial warrants to make in-home arrests. ICE and CBP officers have instead used administrative warrants, which are more easily issued by immigration judges, to forcibly enter homes and arrest suspected illegal immigrants. Obtaining judicial warrants takes extra time, but Democrats say it’s essential to ensure that arrests are justified and not based on racial profiling.

“What we’re asking for is broadly supported by the American public, just that federal agents abide by the same rules that our local police abide by,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said on Thursday. “That’s pretty simple to understand and pretty simple to support. So it’s up to Republicans whether or not they want to have a shutdown.”

Peters declined to comment on how talks with the White House have gone, but he said the conversations are ongoing.

“There are negotiations between the White House and our leadership, but having all of us sit here for the weekend, we would have nothing to do with it,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told me. Coons is part of a congressional delegation planning to attend the Munich Security Conference in Europe this weekend. “If they achieve some solid, strong, bipartisan agreement, we will be called back to vote to approve it, and I’d happily come. … But, frankly, if we’d gotten a response from the White House before late last night, I think you might see a different outcome today.”

During the last federal shutdown, most DHS operations continued, but employees worked without pay. Roughly 1,100 TSA agents quit, according to interim TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill, who testified before the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

During the same hearing, acting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkala said 888 of his agency’s 2,341 employees would be designated essential during a shutdown. The cybersecurity agency’s activities would be limited to protecting life and property.