Senators expressed newfound optimism Monday night that they were on the cusp of a deal to end a month-old partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
After a White House meeting with President Donald Trump earlier in the evening, GOP senators appeared convinced a deal was at hand on a plan that would allow tens of thousands of DHS workers to begin receiving paychecks — including Transportation Security Administration airport security workers who’ve been staying home in droves.
The tentative arrangement would split off a large chunk of regular fiscal 2026 funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement from the earlier full-year funding bill for DHS that stalled in the Senate after the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by immigration enforcement officers.
“I’m more optimistic that by the end of the week, we will fund the Department of Homeland Security,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Monday night after getting a readout from the meeting. She said discussions with Democrats would continue into the evening.
The talks also got a jolt when senators confirmed one of their own, Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., as the next Homeland Security secretary Monday night, 54-45. Mullin got votes from two Democrats, New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich and Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, but even his opponents acknowledged that Mullin would be a more reliable negotiating partner than his predecessor, the ousted Kristi Noem.
Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., who was one of a handful of senators to meet with Trump, declined to give any details, saying she would defer to leadership for any announcements. But she said she believed a solution was at hand.
“I am going to be working through the night, so hopefully we can figure out how to land this plane,” said Britt, who leads the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.
Democrats were a little more circumspect, saying they still needed to see paper on what Republicans were proposing. “I have not seen the language, and I don’t agree to anything till I see the language,” Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said.
Connecticut Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, the Homeland Security subcommittee’s top Democrat, said splitting off ICE funding from the rest of DHS was “the most likely path this week” to reopening most of the agency.
“I think it’s trending well, but obviously we need to land the paperwork,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, another senior appropriator. “There’s going to be an effort to exchange language shortly.”
Democrats wouldn’t get everything they want in the tentative pact; Customs and Border Protection would be funded, for instance. And there were discussions about keeping other parts of ICE funded, including the Homeland Security Investigations division that works on anti-terror efforts, transnational crime, child exploitation and human trafficking, for instance.
But Sen. Peter Welch, a progressive Democrat from Vermont, said dropping ICE immigration enforcement funding was an important step toward reopening the other parts of DHS.
“The real issue here is the ICE and the ICE practices, you know, they were lawless, and what happened in Minneapolis is shocking. It can never happen again,” Welch said. “Let’s debate that, but let’s pay TSA. Let’s get relief funds out for [Federal Emergency Management Agency] folks. Let’s pay the Coast Guard.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he had nothing to announce for the moment, but he too appeared buoyed by the White House meeting, which he did not attend.
Asked if a solution was at hand, he said, “I hope so.”
“Both sides are talking in a serious way,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who spent weeks faulting Republicans for not funding much of the department, said upon leaving the Capitol Monday night.
Another ‘beautiful’ bill?
The new tone marked a stunning turnaround from just 24 hours earlier, when Trump publicly trashed a Thune proposal to fund the entire department except for ICE, with Republican hoping to fund that agency themselves at a later time through a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill.
Trump on Sunday had dismissed Thune’s bid to punt on ICE funding, saying he would agree to that only if Congress passed an expanded version of a controversial voter ID bill that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and photo ID at the polls.
But at the Monday meeting, senators appeared to have convinced Trump that ICE funding could be gained separately through the partisan reconciliation process. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told him that “the president’s OK with reconciliation.”
That stance, if true, would mark another shift in Trump’s position. He has said for months that no more major legislation is needed after Republicans passed their “big, beautiful bill” last summer. And as recently as Sunday night, he called for passing controversial bills not through reconciliation, but through a “talking filibuster” procedure that Thune has said would be unworkable.
Getting the votes for reconciliation could be particularly difficult in the House, where Republicans have an even narrower margin.
But funding for ICE, as well as the Iran war effort, could be a powerful incentive for the GOP to take a shot at another filibuster-proof package — even if it risks another intraparty split over deficits and offsets that almost derailed last year’s effort.
House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., has been downplaying the odds of another filibuster-proof package all year, and he declined to comment again Monday night upon making an appearance on the Senate side, joined by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
“If anyone can do it, Jason can,” McCarthy quipped.
“Stop it,” Smith replied.
