House passes DHS funding bill as lawmakers start recess without shutdown’s end

The House of Representatives passed a stopgap measure Friday evening that would temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security, but the 43-day shutdown could drag on for several more weeks.

The two-month funding extension approved by the House is likely dead on arrival in the Senate, where any funding bill must pass a 60-vote threshold, meaning buy-in from a handful of Democrats. That hurdle hasn’t stopped House GOP leaders from arguing that their rejection of a Senate-passed deal — and introducing a subsequent rival DHS funding proposal — was the path out of the shutdown.

“We’re not going to divide two of the most important agencies in government and leave them hanging like that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters leaving the U.S. Capitol Friday evening. “We just couldn’t do it.”

“House Republicans will have no role in reopening the border and stopping the fight against illegal immigration,” Johnson said earlier Friday on “The Ingraham Angle,” in a scathing reversal of the Senate-passed deal that failed to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks with reporters outside his office on the 28th day of the government shutdown, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)

But the press campaign launched by Republicans in the House of Representatives to persuade the Senate to return to Washington to examine their bill risks falling on deaf ears in the upper chamber.

A Republican Party aide told Fox News Digital that “the easiest way to end this shutdown is for the House to pass the bill the Senate passed.”

“We know that Democrats will not support a CR. In fact, the Senate has tried to pass CRs for the last 40 days and Democrats have blocked Every. Single. One,” they said.

Senators left Washington, D.C., for a two-week Easter recess after unanimously approving a DHS funding measure early Friday morning, with some traveling abroad with congressional delegations.

“I would suggest that the Senate come back and at least take a vote,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain said Friday. “That’s what they were elected to do. So they’re going to stay on vacation for two weeks and not come back until people get paid. It’s pretty sad.”

Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, Republican of Texas, also called on the Senate to “immediately” return to Washington to take up the measure passed by the House in a statement Friday evening.

House lawmakers are also expected to be on recess for the next two weeks.

The tens of thousands of DHS employees who are working without pay during the shutdown remain behind in this feud between the chambers.

President Donald Trump moved Friday to protect TSA agents from further financial hardship by taking executive action directing DHS to pay those employees with existing funds.

The nearly 50,000 officers missed two full paychecks during the ongoing funding shortfall, leading hundreds of officers to leave their jobs and forcing others to face mounting financial hardship.

The president’s decision is likely to reduce long wait times at TSA security checkpoints, although top officials have warned of long-term impacts due to the resignation of more than 500 agents during the funding shutdown.

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, March 20, 2026, in Washington, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)

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However, other DHS personnel, such as those employed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard, and some support staff working for ICE and CBP, will still have their salaries withheld until the department’s funding is restored.

“Anyone who shows up for work deserves to get a paycheck, and the Senate needs to come back and at least do its job,” McClain told Fox News on Friday.

Democratic lawmakers are sure to spend the next few weeks blaming Republicans for the impasse after Johnson’s decision to reject the Senate deal.

“Here we are facing a partisan spending bill that the Senate has already indicated is dead on arrival,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said on the House floor Friday. “The Republicans therefore made the decision to take decisive ownership of this closure. There is no doubt about it.”

The short-term DHS funding patch passed by the House is a clear expansion of government funding and involves no partisan politics.

Trump also spoke out against the bill Friday afternoon in an interview with Fox News.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., did not believe that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., would be honest brokers in the upcoming DHS negotiations. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

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The bill notably does not include any of the reforms that Democrats have been calling for for six weeks to curb immigration enforcement, including strengthening warrant requirements and banning officers from wearing masks.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who has warned throughout the funding impasse that no one would win from a shutdown, has indicated that Democrats are less likely to get those demands met than at the start of the funding shortfall.

“I mean, I think the ship has sailed, and they’ve kind of said goodbye to that opportunity by not providing funding to these agencies,” Thune said.