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With a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security looming at the end of the week, the Senate is not close to resolving fundamental disagreements on immigration law enforcement.
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On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., expressed openness to a new funding extension to provide time for talks between the White House, Senate Republicans, and Senate Democrats on how to get the votes to fund the department.
“It’s a work in progress, but I would hope that the Democrats here in the Senate—if it takes more time, which I believe it will—would be amenable to allowing us to get an extension … to allow more time for those negotiations to continue,” said Thune.
Democrats are demanding that Republicans agree to insert restraints on immigration law enforcement agents into a DHS funding bill, which was the product of bipartisan negotiation before the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
DHS is the only discretionary spending area that has not been covered for the rest of the fiscal year. The department is currently running off of a short-term funding extension, which was meant to buy enough time for negotiations.
Across the board, senators are pessimistic about a long-term deal materializing soon.
“The Democrats are not going to vote for the DHS bill because the Karen wing of their party wants to defund [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], like they wanted to defund the police,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters Tuesday. “And they will punish my Democratic friends the rest of their natural lives if they vote for the DHS bill, which involves ICE.”
Kennedy added that Republicans are also entirely uninterested in any proposal “that looks like it handcuffs ICE in doing their jobs” and that Republicans would like to see a crackdown on sanctuary city policies included in any bipartisan deal.
Democrats have asked for major policy concessions in exchange for their votes to fund DHS, such as a judicial warrant requirement for deportations, as well as a prohibition on operations in certain locations.
Thus far, Democrats and Republicans do not have a deal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both D-N.Y., said in a Monday statement that Republicans’ response to Democrat demands “is both incomplete and insufficient in terms of addressing the concerns Americans have” about ICE.
As the Coast Guard, national disaster response teams, and cybersecurity infrastructure face an imminent dry-up of funding, senators are divided on whether another funding extension, or “continuing resolution,” is a possibility.
“If cooler heads prevail and everybody takes their meds, we’ll end up with a CR, a clean CR, that just extends the status quo, and that we can get [Transportation Security Administration] and Coast Guard and [Federal Emergency Management Agency] funding,“ said Kennedy.
The budget reconciliation bill passed in July 2025 has already provided billions in funding for border security and deportation operations under DHS’ umbrella.
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This article was originally published at the Daily Signal. Photo Credit: Senate Democrats – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98632002.
