President Trump on Thursday signed a bill to fund most of the subagencies within the Department of Homeland Security after a 76-day shutdown of the department.
Earlier on Thursday, House lawmakers approved the DHS funding measure, which was first passed by the Senate more than a month ago, to fully fund subagencies that do not carry out immigration enforcement, including the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Republican lawmakers now plan to advance a separate bill to fund Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Trump has asked Republicans to send that measure to his desk by June 1.
Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas) said Republicans are “absolutely horrified” to be funding the immigration agencies separately.
“The idea that we’re isolating Border Patrol and isolating ICE is offensive to the men and women who serve,” Roy said on the House floor on Thursday. “It is absolutely ridiculous that our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have done this to those men and women.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson had previously dismissed the Senate-passed bill as a “joke.”
While the Senate bill withheld money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and deportation operations thanks to Democrats’ demands, Johnson said last month that the House would move toward advancing a measure that would instead fully fund the agency for 60 days “as soon as possible.”
“This gambit that was done last night is a joke. I’m quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill,” Johnson said after the Senate passed its bill. “We’re not doing that.”
But Senate Republicans were left with few choices, as they needed the support of a handful of Democrats to move any funding legislation through the chamber; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) previously said that a bill that funds ICE and Customs and Border Protection would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
Johnson suddenly spoke more favorably of the Senate-passed bill this week, after the White House urged quick passage of the measure.
“We’re not defying the White House,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “Everybody understands what we’re doing. We’re all one team.”
The White House warned in a memo obtained by Fox News that it would be unable to pay employees in May if the House did not pass the Senate’s DHS bill. The Trump administration had been using existing funds to provide six weeks of back pay and a new pay period for DHS employees, but that funding was quickly dwindling.
“If this funding is exhausted, the Administration will be unable to pay DHS personnel beginning in May, which will once again unleash havoc on air travel, leave critical law enforcement officers—including our brave Secret Service agents—and the Coast Guard without paychecks, and jeopardize national security,” the memo read, according to Fox News.