US Senate Passes Homeland Security Funding But Excludes ICE Budget In Rare Late-Night Agreement

After 42 days of airports in chaos, paycheques stopped and two US citizens killed by federal immigration agents, the Senate voted unanimously in the early hours of Friday to fund the Transportation Security Administration, FEMA and the Coast Guard but left ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection out in the cold.

America's airports had been fracturing for six weeks, and it took a presidential order, a marathon Senate session and the threat of recess to finally crack open a deal that nobody on either side is calling a victory.

Forty-Two Days of Airport Chaos Forced the Breakthrough

DHS appropriations lapsed in mid-February 2026, triggering a partial shutdown that left tens of thousands of TSA officers working without pay. The consequences accumulated fast. By 26 March, more than 480 officers had resigned outright, and nationally more than 11 per cent of scheduled TSA staff were failing to report for duty each day, a figure confirmed by DHS data cited in Congressional testimony.

At some airports, callout rates exceeded 40 per cent. Acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told a House committee on Wednesday that the shortages had produced the 'highest wait times in TSA history' and warned that continued pressure could force individual airport closures.

The security lines had grown into a genuine political crisis by the time Trump intervened on 26 March. In a Truth Social post, the president said he would direct the new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to 'immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation.'

Mullin, who replaced Kristi Noem and was sworn in only days earlier, was instructed to draw on legal authorities the White House had not yet publicly specified. CBS News reported that Trump had not identified which provision of law he intended to invoke, and legal questions over the order's authority remained open even as the Senate vote proceeded.

Trump's announcement broke the logjam in the Senate. Majority Leader John Thune told reporters heading to the floor in the early hours of Friday: 'We're gonna execute on as much of DHS as we can tonight, and then we'll fund the rest of it later.' Republicans and Democrats, who had exchanged final offers and failed test votes for days, moved to unanimous consent on the agencies they could agree on and set aside, for now, the agencies they could not.

Two Deaths in Minneapolis Drove Democratic Demands

The shutdown's central dispute was not procedural. It was rooted in two killings. On 7 January 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a 37-year-old American mother and poet, in her car during Operation Metro Surge, the DHS-described largest immigration enforcement operation ever conducted, which had sent 2,000 agents into the Minneapolis metropolitan area. Bystander video disputed the federal account that Good had weaponised her vehicle.

On 24 January 2026, US Customs and Border Protection officers shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs, while he was filming agents and attempting to help a woman being pushed to the ground. His death was ruled a homicide by the county medical examiner.

Hours after Pretti's killing, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that Democrats would refuse to pass any appropriations bill that funded DHS in full without structural reforms to how ICE and CBP operate. The specific demands evolved over weeks of negotiation and included requirements for agents to wear body cameras and visible identification, a ban on face coverings during operations, judicial warrants before entering private premises, and restrictions on enforcement near schools and churches.

Republicans rejected those demands as operationally unworkable, and Senate Majority Leader Thune told reporters the White House had been 'involved on the back and forth' throughout negotiations. Minnesota, Hennepin County, and the state's Bureau of Criminal Apprehension subsequently filed suit against the Department of Justice and DHS in March 2026, alleging the federal government was withholding investigative evidence related to both killings.

The deal that ultimately passed on Friday gave Democrats their core demand: no funding for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, the division that carries out deportations and interior enforcement. It did not deliver any of the statutory reforms they had sought. Speaking on the Senate floor after the vote, Schumer framed the result as a partial victory. 'In the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats were clear: no blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol,' he said, per NBC News. 'This could have been accomplished weeks ago if Republicans hadn't stood in the way.'

Senate Leaders Traded Blame as the Deal Took Shape

Thune's account of how the agreement came together was considerably less celebratory. He told reporters that Republicans had spent weeks trying to fund the entire department and had offered reforms including officer body cameras and reduced detention capacity, some of which had previously appeared in the House-passed DHS funding bill. Democrats kept those measures out of the final agreement, he said, because their base had insisted on withholding ICE funding entirely.

'This was all about reforms and they were all on the table,' Thune said, as reported by The Hill. 'Basically, that door kind of closed and they started to take the funding off the table. I just think their base was demanding that they not fund ICE.' He added: 'President Trump should never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers and US air travel. We are here because, thanks to Democrats' determined refusal to reach an agreement, there will be no Homeland Security funding bill this year.'

Republicans now intend to fund ICE through the budget reconciliation process, a parliamentary mechanism that allows legislation to pass the Senate on a simple majority rather than the 60-vote threshold required for most bills. Reconciliation was the same tool Republicans used to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso confirmed the party's plan after the vote. Conservative Republicans, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah, had urged colleagues to cancel the scheduled two-week recess and press for a full DHS deal before leaving town. Senators ignored that demand. The chamber is set to reconvene in regular session on 13 April 2026.

A shutdown that began with two Americans shot dead in Minneapolis streets ended, at least partially, with a Senate vote in the middle of the night that satisfied nobody and resolved nothing about the agency at the centre of it all.