Democrats join Republicans to pass DHS bill despite party opposition

Seven Democrats voted with Republicans on Thursday to pass the bill Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending The bill, despite opposition from their leadership over unmet demands for additional guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.

The DHS bill would be packaged alongside three other spending bills, collectively totaling $1.2 trillion in federal spending. Passing the entire package is an important step towards avoiding a Government shutdown Come January 30th.

House lawmakers voted on two separate packages Thursday afternoon. One brings together three spending bills to fund the Departments of War, Education, Labor, Transportation, and Health and Human Services. The second is a standalone bill to fund DHS, which includes ICE.

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., left, pictured next to ICE agent, right. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images; David De Delgado/Getty Images)

The DHS bill was approved by a vote of 220 to 207 with help from seven Democrats. Only one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted in opposition. The larger package was approved with much broader bipartisan support by a vote of 341 to 88, with 149 Democrats joining Republicans to pass it.

Most Democrats bucked the DHS funding legislation after House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and other top Democrats said they opposed the bill because of insufficient restrictions on the president. Donald Trump Immigration campaign.

With the legislation in the rearview mirror, the House advanced the final pieces of the puzzle needed to avoid a government shutdown by the end of the month. It’s also the first time in nearly 30 years that Congress has avoided funding the government through a massive spending bill known as an omnibus or through additional short-term funding extensions called continuing resolutions (CRs).

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With passage of Thursday’s package, lawmakers will have advanced four smaller packages of two to three of the 12 annual appropriations bills.

While some conservatives are still calling for the 12 bills to be passed as individual legislation, the Speaker of the House of Representatives said Mike JohnsonThe Los Angeles Republican framed the GOP effort as a step toward returning Congress to the way the process is supposed to work on paper.

“This is a big thing,” Johnson told Fox News Digital. “We will make history this week, having moved to 12 [appropriations] Billing through this process. Many people thought that would be impossible. But we stuck with it, stuck together, and it’s a big thing.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Los Angeles, speaks to reporters outside his office at the Capitol in Washington, October 28, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Oklahoma, echoed Johnson’s formulation.

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“We’re not here for just another temporary solution,” Cole said on the show. House floor. “We are here to finish the job by providing a full year of funding. This measure is the product of sustained engagement and serious legislation.”

If passed by the Senate, the bills would eliminate the possibility of a government shutdown for the remainder of fiscal year 2026.

Although it ultimately received support from Democrats, the final DHS bill faced fierce opposition from most members of the party. In their view, the bill failed to uphold safeguards against ICE abuses following the fatal confrontation between an ICE agent and a woman named Renee Nicole Judd in Minneapolis. Judd was shot to death in her car and Republicans accused her of obstructing ICE operations just before she was killed.

“Kristi Noem And ICE is out of control. Taxpayer dollars are being misused for the brutal treatment of American citizens, including the tragic murder of Renee Nicole Judd. “This extremism must end,” Jeffries said in a statement before the vote.

While the final draft law includes some new guarantees – such as the claim Ice company agents to adopt body cameras and undergo additional training on how to interact with the public — Democrats said these measures fell woefully short.

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“All the guardrails in the world won’t make sense if the administration doesn’t follow the law and the language we pass,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., the No. 3 House Democrat. “Members should take that into account.” “Ultimately, members will vote [for] What is in the interest of their regions.”

The Senate will act on the package next week, with a deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of this month looming.

Senate Republicans and Democrats have reached a fragile truce in the Senate after just emerging from the longest government shutdown in US history, with neither side inclined to turn off the lights again in Washington, DC.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck SchumerThe New York Democrat and much of his caucus contend that the best way to rein in some of the administration’s actions, especially with Trump’s use of ICE, was through a government funding process.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks to the media after the Senate Weekly Policy Luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on January 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)

But although the four-bill package was crafted with a bipartisan touch, passage in the Senate is not guaranteed.

That’s because there’s a bunch of Democrats in the Senate They are so frustrated by the limitations in the DHS funding bill that they, like their House colleagues, stress they don’t go any further.

Sen. Chris Murphy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, indicated he would not support the package once it reaches the Senate despite being part of negotiations over the final product.

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The bill lacks “meaningful restrictions on the growing chaos at ICE, and increases detention funding compared to the last appropriations bill passed in 2024,” he said in a lengthy statement.

“Democrats have no commitment “To support a bill that would not only fund the miserable scenes we are witnessing in Minneapolis, but would allow the Department of Homeland Security to replicate its brutal playbook in cities across this country,” Murphy said.