Congress Ends Shutdown Without Full DHS Funding, Freezes Immigration Enforcement

(MINNESOTA) — House lawmakers passed a Senate-approved bipartisan bill on February 14, 2026, ending a 75-76 day shutdown that had halted funding across much of the Department of Homeland Security while leaving ICE and CBP outside the measure.

President Trump signed the bill, restoring funding for most DHS agencies and guaranteeing backpay under the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act. The step resolved the immediate crisis for operations such as TSA and the Coast Guard, but it did not settle the fight over immigration enforcement.

Congress split the department’s funding to move the rest of DHS forward without breaking a deadlock over border and enforcement policy. Lawmakers excluded the immigration components as Republicans pressed for reforms after the January 2026 shootings of ICE and CBP agents in Minnesota.

DHS funding had lapsed on February 14, 2026, when a temporary extension expired without an agreement on those reforms. The Senate then unanimously approved funding for non-immigration DHS agencies, and the House, after a delay, passed the measure Thursday by voice vote despite some Republican opposition.

That sequence brought an end to what was described as the longest agency shutdown in U.S. history. It also produced an unusual outcome: the federal government reopened a large share of DHS while keeping the agencies most closely tied to immigration enforcement on a separate track.

Republicans pushed that split because they tied new money for ICE and CBP to policy changes and planned to handle those agencies separately, avoiding the need for Democratic support or a Senate filibuster fight. The result was a partial answer to the DHS shutdown, not a full one.

Pressure had been building inside the department for weeks. President Trump signed a memorandum earlier in April 2026 directing the use of emergency funds under 31 U.S.C. 1301(a) for DHS employee pay and backpay.

DHS Secretary Mullin said on Fox News that the department’s $1.6 billion biweekly payroll funds would run out by May without new appropriations. That projection raised the risk of furloughs for about 92% of roughly 100,000 affected employees, all of whom have now been recalled.

The backpay piece was not left to improvisation. The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act guaranteed pay for workers affected by the lapse once funding resumed, and Trump’s memorandum covered the period before appropriations returned.

Sen. John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, framed the next phase as a broader border fight. Republicans’ plan, he said, would “ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies.”

Outside DHS, the shutdown’s effects remained limited. Existing grant recipients could continue drawing funds until those funds ran out, though furloughed staff could still slow processing, and agencies issued no new discretionary grants during the shutdown.

That meant the immediate public-facing disruption stayed narrower than many federal shutdowns produce. Airport screening and other non-immigration functions regained financial stability once the bill became law, while grant activity largely continued on previously committed money.

The unresolved question now sits in Congress’s budget machinery. Senate Republicans advanced a procedural motion Tuesday to use budget reconciliation for multi-year funding of ICE/CBP through Trump’s term, a move that would give the party a path to fund those agencies without Democratic votes.

Budget reconciliation is an expedited process created under Section 310 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. It allows Congress to pass fiscal bills affecting revenues, mandatory spending, or debt limits with a simple Senate majority (51 votes) instead of the 60-vote threshold that normally applies to legislation vulnerable to a filibuster.

The process also sharply limits Senate debate. Reconciliation bills get 20 hours of debate and cannot be filibustered, giving the majority party a way to move fiscal legislation more quickly if it can hold its own members together.

Congress must first adopt a budget resolution carrying reconciliation instructions to committees. Those committees then draft legislation to meet the spending, revenue, or debt targets they receive, and the Budget Committees assemble the pieces into a single omnibus bill for floor action.

That mechanism has narrow rules. Reconciliation applies to mandatory spending and revenues, not the ordinary discretionary appropriations process that usually funds DHS each year, so any attempt to finance immigration agencies through reconciliation would need to rely on targeted fiscal changes rather than a standard annual spending bill.

Another limit comes from the Byrd Rule, which bars extraneous items, blocks changes to Social Security, and restricts provisions that would increase deficits beyond 10 years. Those restrictions shape how far lawmakers can go if they try to use reconciliation to secure longer-term funding for ICE and CBP.

Republicans still see the route as attractive because it offers a way around the impasse that produced the partial shutdown. A reconciliation bill would let them pursue border and enforcement funding with a simple majority, rather than negotiating a bipartisan appropriations package that ties money to competing demands over immigration enforcement policy.

The political logic has recent precedent. The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act used reconciliation for tax and spending changes, showing how the process can advance a party’s fiscal priorities on a compressed timetable and with fewer votes than most Senate legislation requires.

That does not translate into an immediate settlement. Reconciliation can move more quickly than ordinary legislation, but it still requires a budget resolution, committee drafting, and floor votes, all while staying within the Byrd Rule’s constraints.

For the department’s workforce, the short-term picture has already changed. Backpay has been guaranteed and paid through Trump’s memorandum and the reopening law, removing the immediate payroll threat that Mullin said would hit by May.

Contractors and agencies tied to the non-immigration side of DHS also gained breathing room once Congress reopened the rest of the department. Stable funding reduces the risk of another abrupt interruption in operations such as TSA, where essential workers had continued reporting to work even as the department’s finances tightened.

Public impact remains limited unless a program or grant depends directly on ICE or CBP accounts. Existing grant recipients can keep drawing previously awarded funds until depletion, but no new discretionary grants went out during the shutdown and staff shortages could still slow some activity.

The split funding strategy also makes clear how Congress has separated one part of DHS from another. Lawmakers proved they could reopen most of the department quickly once they carved out the agencies at the center of the border fight, leaving the argument over immigration enforcement to a different legislative vehicle.

Minnesota remained central to that dispute because the January 2026 shootings of ICE and CBP agents there hardened Republican demands for changes before restoring full funding. Those demands shaped the bill that ended the shutdown and now shape the push to use reconciliation for the agencies left behind.

What emerged from the standoff was not a full reopening of DHS in the ordinary sense. Congress ended the shutdown, restored pay protections, and stabilized most of the department, while shifting the battle over ICE and CBP into the Senate’s fiscal rules and the next round of votes on immigration enforcement.