Senate passes budget with two more weeks of Homeland Security funding

The Senate voted on Friday evening to pass the federal budget, funding everything except for one entity: the Department of Homeland Security, which was given a two-week funding extension in order to negotiate new guardrails around Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If no agreement is reached, DHS funding will lapse and the department will face a shutdown.

The agreement — the result of frenzied negotiations between a united Senate Democrat caucus, their Republican counterparts, and the White House — passed 71-29. DHS will remain unfunded over the weekend, however, until the House of Representatives reconvenes on Monday to approve the new stopgap bill.

It’s a stunning reversal of course for the DHS funding bill, which was expected to pass the Senate with a handful of moderate Dem votes, despite vocal opposition for its continued funding of ICE. But after federal agents killed Alex Pretti during a protest in Minneapolis, the Senate Democrats unanimously announced that they would not vote to continue funding the DHS without significant reforms to ICE, forcing the Trump administration into negotiations over keeping the government open. (It would have been the second government shutdown in less than a year.)

Though the Democratic caucus often fractures, the political headwinds were in their favor. A poll conducted by the Democrat-aligned Senate Majority PAC found that a solid majority of voters were in favor of the Democrats forcing a partial shutdown over ICE reforms, and would place the blame on the Republicans if the government remained closed.