Last week, it looked like Senate Democrats had given up on Chuck Schumer’s shutdown strategies. Their colleagues in the House had ensured the passage of the remaining funding bills for FY2026, including the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. Having achieved nothing in the Schumer Shutdown of last fall, the Democrats decided to fight the next budget instead and prepare for the midterms.
And then another ICE shooting in Minneapolis took place. Now it appears that Senate Democrats will try another shutdown to end immigration-enforcement operations in Minnesota and to demand the defunding and dismantling of ICE itself, Axios reports:
The odds of a partial government shutdown are dramatically increasing after another U.S. citizen was killed by federal agents on Saturday in Minneapolis.
Why it matters: The Senate was planning on an up-or-down vote next week on a six-bill package to avoid a shutdown on Jan. 31. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Saturday that Democrats would block the funding bill if DHS funding is included.
- “Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the DHS bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE. I will vote no,” he said in a statement.
Driving the news: Three of the eight Senate Democrats who voted to end the last shutdown are on record opposing this DHS funding bill.
Funding bills are subject to filibuster, which is how Senate Democrats conducted their two-month Schumer Shutdown last fall. If three of the eight Senate Democrats who crossed the aisle in December refuse to do so now, the math gets very difficult for the two bills that the House passed to complete the appropriations for FY2026. Plus, if more lethal-force incidents arise during a shutdown, then it will become even more difficult for Senate Dems to back down from their demands to sideline and/or abolish ICE.
This strategy has one big problem, however, which even Axios acknowledges. DHS doesn’t actually need formal funding this year, or probably for the next few years. The 2025 reconciliation package (the “One Big Beautiful Bill”) already appropriated $75 billion in a standalone fund for immigration operations. Politico noted that last week, too:
Democrats note that federal cash would stop flowing to other agencies, including TSA and FEMA, if Congress allows DHS funding to lapse, while the Trump administration could continue funding ICE with the pot of $75 billion Republicans enacted for immigration enforcement through the party-line tax and spending package they enacted last summer. The other alternative — running DHS on a stopgap funding patch — would maintain the status quo for money and policy while giving the Trump administration more discretion in how to use DHS cash.
To put this in perspective, the entire annual budget for DHS in FY2025 was $64.8 billion, which included much more activity than just immigration. The portion of that budget allocated to ICE was $29 billion, which nearly tripled the $10 billion level in the Biden Regency budgets. The $75 billion fund created by the reconciliation bill can be stretched over four years, which means that the White House can pretty much go two full budget cycles without congressional appropriations, while conducting full-scale ICE operations.
So what would a shutdown of DHS accomplish? It would impact air travel – again – and potentially the Secret Service. But that’s not the only agency that a Schumer Shutdown II would hold as hostages. The other funding bill covers agencies that cover Democrats’ key priorities and constituencies:
Lawmakers later voted 341-88 to pass a larger, more bipartisan measure funding the Pentagon and departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education, also through Sept. 30.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune could choose to force the vote on the DHS package first and refuse to advance the larger omnibus until the DHS funding gets approved. If Democrats want a shutdown, then the GOP should make sure they feel the pain of it from their own interest groups and constituencies. The futility of a shutdown will become rapidly apparent as ICE will continue to operate without the bill, and other agencies that serve American citizens begin to close up again for no real purpose. In fact, Democrats can’t abolish ICE through either budgets or statutes under the current environment, thanks to the OBBB and the fact that Trump won the election in 2024. Another shutdown will have even less value than the first, especially since Americans still want immigration laws enforced – even if they may be getting uneasy about how that looks when state and local governments resist it.
At this point, though, Senate Democrats may have left themselves without an off-ramp. Get ready for Schumer Shutdown II: Insurrection Boogaloo, but don’t expect it to last long. There are no elections upcoming, and the futility of blocking funding for a subordinate agency with three years of funding in the bank already will become apparent quickly enough.
Editor’s Note: Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.
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