Congress votes to reopen key parts of DHS without ICE funding

CNN

By Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju, Annie Grayer, Lauren Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Congress voted to reopen key parts of the Department of Homeland Security — including the Transportation Security Administration — Thursday after weeks of GOP infighting that prolonged a record shutdown of the critical agency.

The bill to fund the department, which has gone unfunded for 75 days, now goes to President Donald Trump for his signature.

House GOP leaders conceded in a weeks-long DHS funding fight in a major retreat by Speaker Mike Johnson as he faced a growing revolt from centrists in his party, multiple sources told CNN. The House abruptly passed the package — which includes no money for federal immigration enforcement, in a major win for Democrats — by a voice vote Thursday afternoon.

The move brings an end to a historic shutdown that led to long lines at airports across the country and comes just before paychecks were about to stall out once again for DHS employees.

Johnson, in the end, decided to move forward after a private leadership meeting earlier Thursday where the team agreed they had little choice but to move the bill — with their own members warning the situation was untenable.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former House member, had also repeatedly warned that he was almost out of money. And GOP leaders knew that the deteriorating DHS situation would only further underscore their party’s diminishing ability to govern in a House rife with divisions and infighting.

Conservative hardliners — who had contributed to holding up the bill for weeks — eventually admitted they had no leverage left in the fight.

GOP Rep. Andy Harris, who leads the House’s ultraconservative bloc, told reporters that “you really can’t stop anything from passing” if dozens of Democrats are also going to help.

The department’s funding woes, however, aren’t fully over. Now, Republicans will seek to fund immigration enforcement without Democratic votes, using a complex budgetary maneuver. (Republicans separately funded ICE through the same process last year, which eliminates any immediate need for the money.)

The move to mostly reopen DHS comes after weeks of drama on Capitol Hill, with Republicans ultimately choosing not to take a recorded vote on the measure that has sharply divided their party.

Some House Republicans had been adamant that House GOP leaders should not cave, though leadership argued that their members took a key step a day earlier toward unlocking immigration enforcement money — which paves the way to end the funding impasse over the rest of DHS. They had also criticized the Senate GOP for passing it by voice vote — a move that the House eventually followed.

“I think it’s asinine that we’re funding the government this way,” Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said just before the vote about the funding strategy.

But afterward, Roy and other ultraconservatives said they didn’t placet the blame entirely on House GOP leadership – and, in some cases, defended Johnson.

“The speaker, I think, handled, under the circumstances, very well,” Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana said.

Many in the House GOP, including Roy, took specific issue with one aspect of the bill: it includes language that specifically zeroes out money for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which many Republicans fear sets them up for primary challenges at home, facing attacks that they defunded ICE. (Johnson has privately sought to tweak the language, but has run into resistance from Senate GOP spending leaders, according to people familiar with the discussions.)

Even Florida Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a senior spending leader who rarely picks fights with his own party, was firm that the House should not allow Senate Democrats to decide simply not to fund one piece of a department outside of the annual spending process.

“The Senate is more concerned about preserving the filibuster than they are about preserving the Constitution. The filibuster is not in the Constitution. The appropriations bills are,” he said, also noting that it is “really really dangerous” that DHS remains shut down.

But Johnson has also been under intensifying pressure from centrist Republicans, including key chairmen and vulnerable members, to resolve the standoff before the House leaves town for next week’s recess. Many believed that voters are likely to blame their party for further chaos, including with TSA.

GOP Rep. Zach Nunn, a centrist who represents a battleground seat, was direct with his leadership about not leaving town until DHS funding is passed.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” Nunn told CNN. “I want to see a resolution today to make sure these guys are paid.”

Until now, Johnson had refused to put the Senate’s DHS compromise bill on the floor, arguing that members would not fund certain parts of the department without assuring money for ICE and border patrol.

Instead, Johnson pressured Senate GOP leaders to move quickly toward unlocking a special power to pass certain budget-related bills without Democratic votes. House Republicans had insisted that they would only advance the partial DHS funding measure once they have money for ICE and border patrol ready to go — even as they acknowledged the process, known as budget reconciliation, would likely take weeks.

Underscoring the difficult task at hand, a senior House Republican told CNN earlier this week that the votes simply didn’t exist to partly end the DHS shutdown this week without having money “in hand” for immigration enforcement.

“No one is going to vote to fund Homeland without money for ICE and CBP,” Rep. Jodey Arrington of Texas, who leads the House Budget Committee, said Tuesday when asked about when the House would move on the partial DHS funding bill that has been sitting in the chamber for weeks.

Arrington — a retiring Republican who is respected among the party’s ultraconservative wing — was not alone.

But GOP Rep. Nick Langworthy urged his colleagues on Wednesday to not “screw around” as the path to ending the record-breaking DHS shutdown remains unclear.

“There needs to be a sense of urgency,” he told CNN when asked about Johnson’s handling of the issue.

Johnson had expressed a reluctance to bring a bipartisan Senate-passed bill to fund critical DHS agencies, like FEMA and TSA, to the floor, citing disagreements with the “language” in the bill. But Langworthy, a centrist who is not typically outspoken about leadership, said Johnson needs to act.

“There’s no time to screw around with this anymore. There’s too many people worrying about Washington score cards and who’s winning, who’s losing, whose idea things were,” he said. “I don’t see how we can leave here without passing it.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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CNN’s Alison Main and Ellis Kim contributed to this report.