U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other immigration enforcement agencies would keep operating even if broad swaths of the federal government close this weekend.
Lawmakers face a Friday deadline for a partial government shutdown, 80 days after they reopened federal agencies after the longest shutdown ever in November. Congress has approved half of its annual spending bills since then and was poised to approve the other the bills late last week in one combined measure.
But the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by immigration authorities on Saturday — just weeks after an ICE officer killed Renée Good in the same city — outraged congressional Democrats, who say they’ll block the spending bill unless it includes more oversight of ICE. Republicans so far have rebuffed that demand, setting up a likely partial shutdown that would close agencies whose funding hasn’t been enacted.
ICE largely doesn’t need the spending bill to pass, however, even though its operations are at the heart of the standoff. That’s because the massive tax and immigration policy law the GOP passed last summer at President Donald Trump’s urging included $75 billion for the enforcement agency over the next four years.
The one-time bonus was nearly eight times as much as the agency received in 2020, its highest-funded year to date, and the largest investment in immigration enforcement since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. Including the ICE funds, DHS overall received $170 billion for immigration enforcement in the GOP law, the $3.4 trillion One Big Beautiful Bill.
The law put $45 billion toward immigration detention facilities and nearly $30 billion for hiring and training ICE agents. It also included $3.5 billion for Justice Department grants to reimburse local law enforcement agencies that help with immigration operations; $6.2 billion for Customs and Border Protection personnel hiring and bonuses; and $6.2. billion for border security technology and screening. Last summer, the influx landed right as ICE appeared close to burning through its annual appropriations.
It’s not clear how much of the money the agency has already spent, said Jennifer Ibáñez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center.
“It’s our best guess … that they still have significant amounts of that $170 billion to spend,” she said. “DHS doesn’t need any more money through the regular appropriation process because they received such a significant windfall under the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Senate Democrats are “blocking vital DHS funding that keeps our country secure and its people safe,” including Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and Border Patrol.
“This funding supports national security and critical national emergency operations, including FEMA responses to a historic snowstorm that is affecting 250 million Americans. Washington may stall, but the safety of the American people will not wait,” she said.
Republican leaders have rejected calls to separate this year’s Homeland Security spending from the measure to fund the rest of the government, but Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee chair Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama) say they’re exploring options that could satisfy both sides.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said on the Senate floor Tuesday that “productive talks are ongoing” and encouraged Democrats to remain engaged to find a solution to avoid a “needless shutdown.”
The extra money from last summer means Trump would have even more leeway than usual to keep his priorities going in a partial shutdown.
Presidents generally have broad discretion over which agencies should close and which should stay open with unpaid workers during shutdowns. Traditionally, the White House budget office has preserved functions crucial to national security, public safety and protecting government property, even if the agencies responsible for those activities aren’t funded.
But outside funding streams — from other legislation or fees collected from government activities — give administrations room to move money around to their most favored agencies, even outside the bounds of spending laws.
Other federal functions without new appropriations would grind to a halt, and Trump and White House budget director Russell Vought leveraged the 2025 shutdown to marginalize agencies they felt mostly served Democratic-controlled constituencies.
In a potential shutdown this weekend, the IRS would shutter just days into tax season. Money for housing assistance programs would be at risk in the aftermath of a winter storm that sent temperatures plummeting to historic lows. Government-backed scientific research would halt overnight.
“The Trump administration knows that if there isn’t an appropriations bill, they can still do a lot of things. Many of the chains come off of them,” said Richard Stern, who studies the federal budget at Advancing American Freedom, a conservative think tank founded by former vice president Mike Pence. “They showed in the last shutdown that they’ll use full executive authority if Congress won’t do its job, and in that sense, they called the Democrats’ bluff. This time, the precise thing Democrats are fighting over is the thing Trump already has permanent funding for.”
The prolonged government closure in November — forced by disagreements over extending enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired last year — concluded with an agreement to approve three of 12 appropriations bills through September and set a deadline of Jan. 30 for the remaining bills.
Three more passed earlier this month, leaving six of the largest and most controversial funding bills to be negotiated between Republicans and Democrats. That bipartisan agreement was announced last week and initially appeared on track to pass.
But the Trump administration also flooded Minneapolis with federal immigration officials as part of Operation Metro Surge, which it called the largest enforcement operation in the agency’s history. Democrats began raising concerns with agents’ aggressive actions against U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants with no criminal history.
Top Democrats on the House and Senate Appropriations committees at first backed the funding agreement they helped negotiate, which would send $64.4 billion to Homeland Security, including $10 billion for ICE — similar to its existing funding levels.
They touted the changes they secured in the bill — including a decrease in detention beds, lowered funding for Border Patrol and for ICE’s enforcement and removal operations, and money for body cameras — and argued that denying funding for Homeland Security would also affect FEMA, the TSA and the Coast Guard. The measure did not include other changes Democrats pushed for, including prohibitions on ICE agents shooting at moving vehicles or detaining U.S. citizens.
Last week, top Democrats also noted that the 2025 GOP law meant ICE could continue to operate in a shutdown. The bill narrowly passed the House, primarily along party lines.
After federal officers shot and killed Pretti on Saturday, though, Democratic outrage boiled over. In the Senate — where at least seven Democrats would have to vote with Republicans to overcome a filibuster — the party’s leaders pledged to block the Homeland Security funding bill until Republicans agree to new accountability measures for ICE.
Now Democrats want Republicans to strip the Homeland Security funding bill from the rest of the package, which has wider bipartisan support. They acknowledge that it would do little to shut down ICE’s operations, but argue it’s necessary to force changes.
“Americans must be eyes wide open that blocking the DHS funding bill will not shut down ICE. ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap, whether or not we pass a funding bill,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), the lead Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “But we all saw another American shot and killed in broad daylight. There must be accountability, and we must keep pushing Republicans to work with us to rein in DHS.”
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