The 75-day partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security ended Thursday when House Republicans passed the exact bill they had spent 10 weeks refusing to accept. The measure funds TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service through September. It does not include a single dollar for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol.
Trump signed it Thursday afternoon.
What Happened
The shutdown began in mid-February when Congress failed to pass a DHS funding bill. Senate Republicans, unable to get Democratic votes for a package that included ICE and CBP funding, passed a bill without it. House conservatives rejected that bill, insisting they would not vote for anything that left immigration enforcement agencies unfunded.
That standoff lasted 75 days. During that time, 838 TSA officers quit. Airport security lines grew. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned lawmakers this week that if they did not act by Thursday, emergency funds would run out entirely and thousands of workers would go without pay.
On Thursday, facing that deadline and a growing revolt from swing-district Republicans, House leadership brought the Senate bill to the floor and passed it by voice vote. A voice vote means no individual lawmaker’s name is attached to the outcome.
What Democrats Got
The bill that passed is the bill Democrats had been demanding since February. No ICE funding. No CBP funding. No restrictions on how DHS conducts immigration enforcement operations, but no new money either.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a clear Democratic win. “Senate Democrats were clear: no blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol,” he said after the vote.
Republicans who had drawn the hardest lines acknowledged they had run out of options. Representative Scott Perry, the former Freedom Caucus chair, was blunt in his opposition even as the bill passed. “Caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund law enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again,” he wrote. “If that’s the vote, I’m a no.”
It was the vote. It passed anyway.
How Republicans Explained It
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, whose chamber had passed the same bill weeks earlier, chose to blame Democrats for the outcome rather than the House conservatives who blocked it. “President Trump should never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers and U.S. air travel,” Thune said. “We are here because, thanks to Democrats’ determined refusal to reach an agreement, there will be no Homeland Security funding bill this year.”
Democrats control neither chamber of Congress. They passed nothing during the shutdown and blocked nothing. The bill that ended the shutdown passed with Republican votes, over the objections of Republican holdouts, and it is the bill Senate Democrats backed from the beginning.
What Comes Next for ICE and CBP
Immigration enforcement agencies remain without new funding for now. Republicans passed a separate budget resolution this week that creates a pathway to fund ICE and CBP through the reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority in the Senate and bypasses the Democratic filibuster.
That fight will play out over the coming months. For now, TSA workers are getting paid, airport lines should shorten, and the conservative faction that spent 10 weeks demanding more got exactly what they started with: nothing extra, and a voice vote nobody will have to answer for.
The Bigger Picture
The DHS shutdown was the longest partial government shutdown of a single agency in American history. It ended the same way most Washington standoffs end: with the side that had leverage giving it up when the clock ran out.
House conservatives argued for 75 days that they would not accept a deal that left immigration enforcement unfunded. On Thursday, they accepted it. The shutdown is over. The deal is done. The workers are back. The hardliners got a voice vote and a budget resolution that may or may not produce results in reconciliation.
Democrats got the bill they asked for in February.