Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, “House Republicans have given up.”
TSA line at Atlanta airport during DHS closure
USA TODAY’s Eve Chen takes us inside the world’s busiest airport during the DHS shutdown.
WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security funding crisis that has plagued Washington and the nation for nearly seven weeks, disrupting airports, endangering the safety of Americans and ultimately resulting in the longest partial government shutdown in history, is finally coming to an end.
Congressional Republicans announced a new deal on April 1, announcing that the House would agree to pass a previously approved bipartisan Senate bill that would fully fund DHS, except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Security.
At the same time, he said he would expedite separate legislation to secure more long-term funding for the same agencies.
“In the coming days, Senate and House Republicans will follow the President’s direction to fully fund the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: the appropriations process and the reconciliation process,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said in a joint statement.
It was a sudden about-face for House Republicans, who had revolted on March 27 against the Senate’s compromise bill, which passed unanimously in the middle of the night. Just days ago, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is facing pressure from conservative hardliners, called the Senate deal a “joke”. The high-profile split among lawmakers highlighted dramatic divisions within the Republican Party until President Donald Trump intervened on April 1 to functionally support the Senate’s approach.
It wasn’t immediately entirely clear what the timeline for ending the shutdown would look like, given that the House and Senate are in a two-week recess scheduled through April 13. Multiple congressional aides told USA TODAY the Senate needs to pass the DHS bill again. It will probably be agreed unanimously during a brief “preliminary” session on April 2, followed by a second vote in the House.
Importantly, neither of the top two Democrats in Congress indicated they intended to derail the proposed path forward. “House Republicans have relented,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the deal was announced.
“Republican divisions have derailed bipartisan consensus for days, and American families have been made to pay the price for the dysfunction,” he said in a statement. “Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats have never wavered. We have been clear from the beginning: We will fund critical security, protect the American people, and not issue blank checks to reckless ICE and Border Patrol enforcement.”
In a separate statement, House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said, “Now is the time to pay TSA workers, end the chaos at our airports, and fully fund every department of Homeland Security not connected to Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation apparatus.”
The political shift on Capitol Hill finally revealed a plausible exit to the government shutdown, marking the culmination of a protracted showdown in Washington, D.C., and testing Democrats’ resolve to visibly push back against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies in a high-stakes midterm election year.
As is common with (increasingly frequent) government shutdowns, the results were mixed.
For a party struggling to hold on to power, the maneuver shined an embarrassingly bright spotlight on a controversial and politically complex issue for Republicans for more than a month. And it brought about some important changes. Federal agents were called in from Minnesota after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Preti came under intense scrutiny.
President Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, largely in connection with a separate controversy over expensive TV ads she oversaw. Her successor has publicly promised greater transparency and at least some new immigration guardrails.
But even weeks of chaos at the airport weren’t enough to pressure Republicans and the White House to agree to some of the more significant reforms Democrats had sought. Banning police officers from wearing masks and requiring judicial warrants for immigration searches were among the demands left out of the final agreement, but accountability measures for DHS were also included.
Although Congress won’t immediately fund ICE and the Border Patrol, both divisions of DHS have already received a large funding injection as part of the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” passed last year. This tax and spending law was approved through a special budget process called reconciliation. The process requires support from only a simple majority among senators, rather than the usual 60 votes in the Senate.
Just before the latest shutdown deal was signed, President Trump ordered Republicans to pass a new reconciliation bill, this time with more funding for immigration enforcement and more cash for the Iran war. He hopes to have the bill on the table by June 1.
Zachary Schermele is a Congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can email us at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and on Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social..
