With no agreement on DHS funding, Congress leaves town

Savannah Behrmann and Valerie Yurk, CQ-Roll Call on Feb 12, 2026

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WASHINGTON — Lawmakers left Washington on Thursday without a deal on an immigration enforcement overhaul, virtually guaranteeing a partial shutdown of the Homeland Security Department when current funding runs out this weekend.

Unless progress is made, neither chamber is expected to return to the Capitol next week, when Congress is scheduled to be in recess.

Bipartisan negotiations on an immigration plan were expected to continue over the recess. Leaders of both chambers told members they would be given 48 hours notice to return to the Capitol if a deal is reached.

The decision to leave came after the Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed to move forward on a House-passed full-year Homeland Security appropriations bill. The vote was 52-47, with all Democrats except Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania in opposition. Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., flipped his vote to a “no” when it was clear the motion lacked enough support, in order to be able to reconsider the vote at a later time.

After the vote, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, immediately brought up a motion for a two-week continuing resolution under unanimous consent.

“We are working in good faith to find a pathway forward,” she said. “What we’re asking is ‘let us continue to do that.’”

Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., objected, saying Democrats had not received text from the White House until Wednesday night — “far too late to be able to engage in any compromise before the deadline.”

Democrats have made clear they will not vote for another stopgap extension of DHS funding without progress on an immigration enforcement deal. And that message did not waver on Thursday, even after White House border czar Tom Homan announced immigration agents would pull out of Minnesota, the site of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens last month.

This “is not what law and order looks like,” Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday after the vote. “Republicans simply cannot pretend that this outrage does not exist. It’s their responsibility now to step forward, heed the calls of the American people and work with us to pass real reform.”

A senior White House official told reporters Thursday that the administration’s offer to Democrats addressed “at least a portion” of their demands. But the official said the administration could not accept the Democratic demand for requiring judicial warrants whenever immigration agents want to search private property, saying such a constraint would hamstring immigration enforcement operations. Currently, only an administrative warrant is typically required.

“There’s some obviously red lines that Democrats have and that the White House has,” Thune told reporters. “Every iteration of this gets a step closer, because I think the White House is giving more and more ground on some of these key issues.”

On Wednesday night, the White House had sent Senate Democrats legislative text similar to the counterproposal sent earlier this week, which many called a nonstarter. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said it was “not serious [and] not being taken seriously.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called the White House proposal “unresponsive and unserious,” adding, “It’s essentially more cosmetic and window dressing than real reform.”

Thune countered that the White House had made “a real offer” and Democrats should be blamed for a partial shutdown. “We don’t have a solution yet and the Democrats, at least at the moment, evidently, have no interest in funding the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.

While the Senate focused on DHS funding, the House this week was embroiled in more than just shutdown politics.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., saw an embarrassing defeat on the floor late Tuesday night when three Republicans joined Democrats in sinking a procedural vote that would have blocked the chamber from acting against President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Even more Republicans voted with Democrats on Wednesday to reverse Trump’s tariffs on Canada — the first of many measures aimed at the tariffs expected to go to the floor in upcoming weeks.

The chamber also passed a bill Wednesday that would require photo ID at the polls and prove citizenship at registration.

Throughout the week, a handful of lawmakers went to the Justice Department to view unredacted documents related to its investigation into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, afterward putting pressure on DOJ to free up more information from the files.

And in a high profile committee appearance, Attorney General Pamela Bondi on Wednesday heavily deflected criticism for the DOJ’s release of documents, showing little regret over how the department had handled the files.

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(Jacob Fulton and Aris Folley contributed to this report.)