The Senate on Friday passed an amended spending package that replaces a full-year Department of Homeland Security funding bill with a two-week stopgap to give lawmakers time to hash out policy disagreements over immigration enforcement.
The broader package still includes full-year funding for the departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury — bills that will nearly complete the delayed fiscal 2026 appropriations process.
The 71-29 Senate vote on the measure came hours before a midnight funding deadline.
The government will still shut down through at least Monday, when the House returns to Washington and aims to vote on the updated package. The impact of the funding lapse will be minimal if the measure can quickly clear the House.
President Trump said he supported the deal because he does not want to see “another long and damaging government shutdown” that could slow economic growth.
“Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ’YES’ Vote,” he said on social media Thursday evening after the agreement came together.
Democratic leaders had previously signed off on a full-year DHS spending bill but withdrew their support after federal agents fatally shot U.S. citizen protester Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last weekend.
They want to renegotiate the bill to add guardrails on the Trump administration’s deportation force to prevent that type of violence, and hold agents accountable if they use unnecessary force.
The Democrats’ demands include forcing ICE to end roving immigration enforcement patrols and use judicial warrants. They also want to require agents to unmask, wear body cameras and carry identification.
Republicans are pushing their own preferred policies, like cracking down on sanctuary city policies that allow state and local jurisdictions to impede federal immigration enforcement.
Lawmakers will not have much time to negotiate and pass a deal before the stopgap DHS funding expires Feb. 13.
Once the spending package is signed into law, Congress will have passed 11 of the 12 fiscal 2026 spending bills.
“We will have funded 96% of all of government,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said ahead of the final vote, drawing applause from her colleagues.
She said the “major milestone” shows Congress can work in a bipartisan manner to complete its core responsibility of funding the government and determining how executive agencies should spend that money.
That milestone, however, comes a third of the way already into the fiscal year, which began in October with a record 43-day shutdown.
The Senate had hoped to vote on the updated spending package Thursday night, but could not do so without unanimous consent from all 100 senators.
Republicans and Democrats alike used their leverage to secure concessions, most of which came in the form of amendment votes on the package designed to highlight their concerns.
Those amendments all failed. The only actual change to the package was substitution of the full-year DHS spending bill with the two-week stopgap.
The rejected amendments were:
— a measure from Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul to strip $5 billion in funding for refugee assistance.
— an effort from Missouri GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt to defund the National Endowment for Democracу.
— multiple proposals from Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee to remove earmarks from the spending bills and defund the United States African Development Foundation.
— an effort from Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, to repeal a $75 billion funding increase for ICE that Republicans enacted in their One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and use the savings to reverse the law’s Medicaid funding cuts.
— a measure from Sen. Jeff Merkley, Oregon Democrat, to ban pocket rescissions — White House requests for Congress to cut spending that are sent at the end of the fiscal year to skirt a requirement that executive branch is obligated to spend the funding if Congress does not approve the proposed cuts within 45 days.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, also held up the spending package until he secured support from Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, for future votes on two of his priorities.
One is his bill to end sanctuary city policies that he wants to receive a vote when the Senate takes up a full-year DHS funding deal in the coming weeks. The measure would make it illegal for state and local officials to impede federal immigration enforcement, and impose criminal penalties if illegal immigrants they release from custody go on to kill or seriously injure someone.
Mr. Graham also secured Mr. Thune’s support for a vote at a time yet to be determined on a bill to provide an adjudication process for conservatives whose phone records were spied on as part of the Biden-era Arctic Frost probe.
