DHS to shut down, but ICE won’t stop

The Department of Homeland Security will shut down first thing Saturday after Congress failed to reach a solution to fund the department. Most of Congress already left the Capitol Thursday, with many senators heading to a security conference in Munich, Germany, and others heading back to their home states.

“We are not even going to pretend that we are trying to figure it out,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R- Alaska, said. “It doesn’t look great.” Murkowski, who is attending the conference in Germany, seemed to reflect the general attitude around the department’s shutdown, with neither party scrambling for a solution.

While Democratic lawmakers refused to continue funding DHS because of agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, which have been accused of ignoring court orders and the Constitution, both of those entities will continue to function without pause in the shutdown. That’s because of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed last year and provides ICE over $75 billion to be used over multiple years, a nearly 190 percent budget increase from typical ICE budgets.

Affected agencies include the Transportation Safety Authority, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The largest impact this shutdown might have is on airline travel with 95 percent of TSA employees deemed essential workers.

“Democrats will not support a blank check for chaos,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. “If Republicans want to keep DHS funded, they need to get serious.”

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All Democratic senators, except Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., voted against advancing the bill to fund DHS through the rest of the year. “ICE has $75 billion in funding from Trump BBB that I did not vote for. Shutting DHS down has zero impact and zero changes for ICE. But it will hit FEMA, Coast Guard, TSA and our Cybersecurity Agency,” he said.

Nevertheless, most Democrats were ready to make that temporary sacrifice. One senator hopes the recess may bring some clarity to Republican lawmakers on the local impacts of ICE and CBP in their own constituencies.

“Republicans are in a bubble and do not understand the depth of the anger out there in the world,” Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said. “Maybe this break will allow them to go home and get yelled at.”