The 76-day shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, the longest funding lapse in U.S. history, is over.
President Trump signed a bill Thursday to fund most of the department’s agencies after the House passed it by voice vote.
The two agencies that did not receive annual appropriations in the bill — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the border security functions of Customs and Border Protection — have a separate stream of funding that has kept them operational throughout the shutdown.
The bill was signed just in time to prevent department employees from losing their paychecks again.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced on social media that his department is “back open,” but added, “This Democrat shutdown NEVER should have happened.”
“To our great, patriotic employees who have continued to protect the homeland every single day without a guaranteed paycheck — thank you,” he said. “President Trump and I are very grateful to be in the fight with you to Make America Safe Again.”
Senate Democrats filibustered a full department funding bill the House passed in January as they pushed for an overhaul of immigration enforcement agencies after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens who were protesting the deportation sweeps in Minneapolis.
After weeks of bipartisan negotiations on potential policy changes, Republicans concluded that Democrats would never compromise and that their goal was simply to defund ICE and Border Patrol.
The bulk of the shutdown’s impact has been on other agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which have had to cease nonessential operations.
Midway through the shutdown, Mr. Trump used his executive power to restart paychecks for essential employees who had been reporting to work without compensation.
Mr. Mullin had warned lawmakers last week that the department would run out of emergency payroll funding at the end of the month. If the shutdown continued into May, employees would not get paid.
“We were not going to have lines at TSA,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said of the agency that polices airports. “Everybody gets their paychecks now and will get them moving forward.”
The speaker said Republicans will soon “finish the work” and fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years “with no crazy Democrat reforms.”
As Democrats continued to filibuster the full appropriations bill, Senate Republican leaders proposed a two-step funding approach to break the impasse.
They would fund all of the department except the disputed immigration enforcement agencies with Democrats’ cooperation, and then use the filibuster-proof reconciliation process to give ICE and CBP enough money to last through Mr. Trump’s presidency.
The Senate passed the partial funding bill nearly a month ago, but the House did not want to clear it until Republicans passed the party-line measure funding ICE and CBP.
“We threw a fit, and we had to,” Mr. Johnson said. “We held the homeland bill, the underlying funding bill, because we had to ensure that they could not isolate and eliminate those two critical agencies.”
The House initially amended the Senate’s partial funding bill with a short-term stopgap to fund the entire department.
The Senate rejected the amendment and passed the measure again. House Republicans then held it up for weeks.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, slammed House Republicans for inflicting “over a month of unnecessary pain for millions of Americans.”
Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, expressed frustration this week after Mr. Johnson initially declined to pass the bill and sought to remove the provision that zeroed out ICE and CBP funding.
“It would be the same effect,” he said. “I don’t know how you change the effect of the law. So at some point they’ve just got to [move].”
Republicans gave ICE and CBP more than $150 billion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. That money has kept the agencies operational during the record shutdown.
Mr. Thune said Senate Republicans verified there was enough funding left to fulfill ICE and CBP’s needs through the remainder of the fiscal year and committed to adding more in a follow-up reconciliation package.
The White House also pressured the House to immediately pass the partial funding bill, as payroll funding was set to run out.
Mr. Johnson credited his change of mind to the House voting Thursday to adopt a budget resolution that unlocks the reconciliation process needed to fund ICE and CBP.
“We passed the resolution first. That was critically important for us to do to ensure that we’re going to protect the homeland, even though Democrats aren’t willing to do it,” he said. “So now that that box is checked, we’re allowing them to proceed with the rest of it.”
The Senate approved the budget blueprint, which instructs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Judiciary Committee to draft legislation by May 15, with up to $75 billion for ICE and CBP.
Mr. Trump says he wants the immigration enforcement funding bill on his desk by June 1.
Earlier in the week, House Republicans had insisted they would not pass the partial funding bill until the final reconciliation measure had cleared both chambers of Congress.
“Never,” House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, Texas Republican, said Monday.
“It would be naive” to trust the Senate to follow through, he said. “There are very few things that garner the strong support of every member of our conference that one was roundly and impassionately rejected.”
House Republicans had also criticized Mr. Thune for passing the partial funding bill by voice vote, shielding his conference from having to go on record in support of defunding ICE and Border Patrol.
In the end, they too passed the bill by voice vote.
“Yeah,” Mr. Thune said when asked about the irony. He paused, said he probably shouldn’t comment further, and walked away laughing.
