(The Hill) – The record-long partial shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) came to an end Thursday after President Trump signed a bill to fund most of the agencies.
The bipartisan agreement comes after months of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans in Congress, stretching the lapse in funding to 76 days.
The House approved the funding package by a voice vote earlier Thursday, a month after the Senate advanced the measure.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had pushed back against the Senate bill, which cut out funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. Those agencies, however, received funding already from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Johnson and other House Republicans had vowed that they would not pass this legislation until a separate funding package for these agencies was approved. However, the GOP leader faced mounting pressure from the White House, the Senate and other lawmakers amid dwindling funding and staffing shortages at the department.
“It’s about time,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement after the House vote, calling the wait time “unnecessary pain for millions of Americans.”
The bill provides funding for 20 of DHS’s agencies, including the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Secret Service, through the end of the fiscal year.
ICE and Border Patrol are the only two agencies under DHS not to receive funding in this bill. House Republicans are currently working to enact tens of billions of dollars to fund these agencies for the next three years through a reconciliation process, which would bypass the Senate’s filibuster requirement.
Democrats have opposed funding for these agencies amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, and after two U.S. citizens were fatally shot in Minnesota by federal agents. Party leaders demanded key reforms to ICE and Border Patrol, including a mask ban, judicial warrant reform and a universal code of conduct.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin — who was serving as a Republican senator from Oklahoma when the shutdown began — celebrated the funding package’s passage on Thursday.
“After 76 days, the longest government shutdown in history is over,” Mullin wrote on social media.
Mullin commended House Republicans’ effort to separately fund ICE and Border Patrol through reconciliation “so liberals can’t play games with federal law enforcement funding.”
“To our great, patriotic employees who have continued to protect the homeland every single day without a guaranteed paycheck—thank you,” he continued. “President Trump and I are very grateful to be in the fight with you to Make America Safe Again.”
