Shutdown Deadline Nears as House Takes Up Homeland Security Bill, With Democrats in Revolt

WASHINGTON — With a Jan. 30 funding deadline approaching, House lawmakers moved Thursday toward a vote on the last major set of annual spending bills, as Democrats threatened to oppose the measure for the Department of Homeland Security over concerns that it does not do enough to restrain Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The dispute has raised fresh uncertainty over whether Congress can complete the appropriations process in time to avoid a partial shutdown — just months after a record 43-day shutdown ended in mid-November.

At the center of the latest standoff is the Homeland Security funding bill, a roughly $64.4 billion measure that Democrats say fails to impose meaningful “guardrails” on ICE as President Donald Trump expands immigration enforcement nationwide. ([Reuters][3]) The opposition has intensified since Jan. 7, when an ICE agent fatally shot Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, in Minneapolis — a case that has drawn protests and renewed calls for oversight.

House Democratic leaders told colleagues behind closed doors that they planned to vote against the Homeland Security bill, according to lawmakers and news reports, a position that could deny Speaker Mike Johnson room for error as Republicans try to pass the package with a slim 218–213 majority.

Republicans argue that the Homeland Security bill, along with the broader spending package, is necessary to avert a shutdown and to fund agencies responsible for border security, disaster response and aviation screening. Democrats counter that the bill’s oversight provisions are insufficient, even as it directs additional money toward measures like body cameras for certain enforcement actions.

The bill is part of a larger roughly $1.2 trillion set of appropriations that also funds the Defense Department and several domestic agencies, including Health and Human Services, Education, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development — accounts that have been operating under a temporary funding extension set to expire at the end of the month.

Lawmakers have already advanced eight of the 12 annual appropriations bills, sending several measures to the Senate and, in some cases, to the president’s desk. Senate leaders have been working through smaller packages of spending bills with bipartisan votes, but the Homeland Security measure has emerged as the most politically volatile.

Even if the Homeland Security bill falters, the practical effects could be narrower than in past shutdowns, analysts said, because ICE has received separate funding in recent legislation — a dynamic that has left Democrats divided between using the vote as leverage and avoiding disruptions to government operations.

A failure to enact the remaining bills, or pass another stopgap measure, could still trigger shutdown procedures for the agencies covered by lapsed appropriations, while mandatory programs such as Social Security and Medicare typically continue.

For now, House leaders have pressed ahead, framing the week’s vote as a test of whether Congress can return to “regular order” budgeting after years of reliance on last-minute, all-in-one packages. If the House passes the measures, the Senate would still need to act quickly before the funding deadline — leaving little margin for delay as lawmakers confront the political aftershocks of immigration enforcement and the Minneapolis shooting.