Homeland Security shutdown will likely stretch into next week as House weighs Senate's funding plan

Audio By Carbonatix

WASHINGTON (AP) — The funding lapse for the Department of Homeland Security will likely stretch into next week as the House contemplates passing a Senate plan it had previously rejected to fund the bulk of the agency, but not its immigration enforcement operations.

There was no resolution Thursday to the standoff, now in its 48th day, after both chambers met for just a few minutes in pro forma sessions. Nonetheless, the Republican leadership and President Donald Trump have coalesced around a plan to fully fund DHS as part of a two-step process. The agreement puts the congressional leaders on the same page for ending the impasse after they had pursued separate paths that resulted in Congress leaving Washington last week for its spring recess without a fix.

During the brief sessions, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put aside the House plan to fund the entire department for 60 days. Then the House met briefly without taking up the bipartisan Senate plan that had been worked out with Democrats, though Thune is looking toward eventual passage.

“I don’t know the particulars around what the House will do with it,” Thune told reporters. “My assumption is, at some point, hopefully, they’ll move it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Thune, announced Wednesday that they would return to the Senate measure, which funds most of DHS with the exception of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol. Republicans will try later to fund those agencies through party-line spending legislation that could take months to finish.

Neither outcome is guaranteed, and the strategy could potentially still face opposition from the GOP’s own ranks even though Trump has given his support.

Johnson’s embrace of the two-track plan marks a sharp reversal from less than a week ago, when he derided it as a “joke” and said he was “quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”

He now appears to be on board. But securing support from his own conference could prove more difficult after a sizable group of House Republicans blasted the Senate-passed bill last week.

House Republicans were expected to hold a conference call later Thursday to discuss the next steps.

Thune pointed to a “number of conversations” when he was asked how the Republican leadership and Trump aligned to move ahead after their apparent divisions a week earlier.

“The thing that some people want to do, we can’t do,” said Thune. “And so you have to figure out what’s in the realm of the possible. And you have to just continue to define reality for people.”

Democrats in both chambers were aligned last week with the Senate funding plan passed with bipartisan support. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York on Wednesday blamed Republicans for not acting more quickly.

“Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction,” Schumer said.

Even with the progress, the most conservative lawmakers are likely to seek full funding for all of Trump’s immigration and deportation operations.

“Let’s make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again,” Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., posted on X. “If that’s the vote, I’m a NO.”

Meanwhile, the budget package that Trump wants prepared for later this year is expected to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the remainder of Trump’s term, as a way to try to ensure those agencies are no longer at risk from Democrats objecting to his immigration enforcement agenda. Trump said he wants that legislation on his desk by June 1.

Thune acknowledged the potential hurdles to that route, such as efforts to expand the scope of the bill. He said the goal is to keep it “as narrow and focused as possible” to speed passage.

“We need to kind of move with haste,” he said. “It’s probably not a likely magnet for all these other issues.”

The vast majority of DHS employees have reported to work during the shutdown, but many thousands have gone without pay. As more Transportation Security Administration agents called out from work, there was increasing frustration for air travelers confronted by long waits at some airport security lines. Those bottlenecks appeared to be clearing this week as agents began receiving backpay after Trump signed an executive order.

___

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.