The bill excludes funding for ICE and the Border Patrol but restores it for federal airport security workers. The House could consider the package on Friday.
The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Thursday.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
By John Yoon and Michael Gold
March 27, 2026Updated 6:40 a.m. ET
The Senate voted early Friday to fund the Department of Homeland Security except for its immigration enforcement and deportation operations, raising the prospect of an end to a weekslong partial shutdown that has strained federal workers and caused long waits at airports.
The measure does not include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, in effect reflecting a proposal that Democrats had offered for weeks as they refused to fund federal immigration enforcement operations without adding new restrictions on agents.
“Senate Democrats were clear: no blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said after the measure passed.
The bill must still be considered by the House, which could vote on it as soon as Friday. It was unclear whether the measure would pass that chamber, where Speaker Mike Johnson holds a narrow Republican majority. A number of hard-right Republicans have criticized the Senate’s approach and oppose a funding bill that does not include money for immigration enforcement.
Should the House approve the measure and President Trump sign it, the deal would end a negotiating standoff that caused the longest partial government shutdown on record.
The Senate’s agreement, which it passed in a voice vote at around 2:20 a.m., came hours after Mr. Trump said that he would direct the homeland security secretary to pay Transportation Security Administration agents, who have worked without pay since funding for the department lapsed on Feb. 14.
Though several agencies had gone without funding, the shutdown most visibly affected airport security workers. Hundreds of them quit or called out of work, leading to staggeringly long lines at some of the busiest airports in the country, a growing crisis that forced senators to try to find a deal.
Even after Mr. Trump’s announcement on Thursday, senators suggested that their negotiations were ongoing. But lawmakers struggled to find a deal that would fund the department while including new curbs on immigration agents that would be agreeable to both Senate Democrats and the White House.
The measure that the Senate approved contains modest provisions that lawmakers had agreed to in January, including money for body cameras for immigration enforcement officers. But it falls short of the restrictions that Democrats have demanded, including barring ICE agents from wearing masks, after Republicans said that senators could not impose restrictions on an agency that they were not funding.
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the Senate majority leader, on Friday criticized what he called a “piecemeal” approach to funding.
“We could be standing here right now passing a funding bill with a list of reforms if Democrats had made the smallest effort to actually reach an agreement,” he said. “But they didn’t.”
Senate Republicans, who presented this proposal to Mr. Trump earlier this week, have said that ICE and the Border Patrol can continue to operate using the billions of dollars that the G.O.P. gave both agencies as part of their sweeping tax and domestic policy bill. (Mr. Trump had been expected to use funds from that legislation to pay T.S.A. agents, though it was unclear why he waited more than five weeks after the shutdown began to direct that the money be used to do so.)
Republicans also said that they planed to draft a separate bill that would address new funding for immigration enforcement and would include the president’s long-sought restrictions on voting. They are hoping to push that bill through Congress without Democratic support using a process called budget reconciliation.
Still, that effort would require near-unanimous support, and many G.O.P. lawmakers are worried that the party would not be able to unite behind that legislation, particularly in an election year.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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