House passes DHS stopgap 213-203 as Senate leaves on recess

The House passed a 60-day continuing resolution to fund all of the Department of Homeland Security on March 28, 2026, by a vote of 213-203, per . Speaker Mike Johnson brought the bill to the floor after rejecting a Senate-passed alternative that had cleared the upper chamber in the early hours of March 27. All Republicans who voted supported the House bill. Three Democrats broke with their party and voted yes: Reps. Don Davis (NC-01), MGMarie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03), and Henry Cuellar (TX-28), all representing competitive or politically mixed districts.

The 60-day stopgap would have funded all DHS agencies, including ICE and the border patrol functions of Customs and Border Protection, at current spending levels through May 22, 2026. If passed by the Senate and signed by the president, it would have created another funding cliff on May 22 rather than ending the shutdown permanently.

Just hours before the House vote, the Senate passed a different DHS funding bill at 2:19 a.m. on March 27 by voice vote, per . That bill funded eight of DHS's ten main components, including TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, CISA, and the Secret Service, but explicitly excluded ICE and the border patrol functions of CBP. Senate Democrats insisted on those exclusions as an accountability condition after ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, and CBP officers killed U.S. citizen Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on January 24, 2026.

A voice vote means no senator is individually on the record. The Senate used a voice vote rather than a roll call because a recorded vote would have forced vulnerable senators to take a public position on ICE funding in an election year.

Senate Minority Leader CSChuck Schumer declared the House bill dead on arrival immediately after its passage, per the . The Senate then departed for a two-week Easter recess, returning no earlier than mid-April. That departure means even if Schumer reversed course, the Senate has no mechanism to vote on the House bill while it is in recess. The shutdown will continue at minimum until Congress returns.

The bicameralism requirement under Article I, Sections 1 and 7 of the Constitution requires both chambers to pass identical text before a bill can be presented to the president, per the . The House and Senate have now each passed a DHS funding bill that the other chamber refuses to consider. Neither bill can become law in its current form.

The practical consequences of the 42-day shutdown were visible at airports across the country. More than 510 TSA officers had resigned during the unpaid shutdown period. Callout rates at major airports reached 40 to 55 percent, with wait times at security checkpoints exceeding four hours at busy facilities, per . Passengers missed flights and airlines reported disruptions at major hubs.

The TSA is funded through DHS. Because the DHS appropriation lapsed in mid-February 2026, TSA employees have been working without pay. Federal workers are legally prohibited from refusing to work during a shutdown even if unpaid, but they can resign, and more than 510 did.

President Trump signed a separate executive order on March 27 directing DHS to pay TSA employees using funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which Congress had passed earlier in 2026 and which contained discretionary spending authority. The order directed TSA employees to begin receiving pay by March 30, per .

Legal scholars and congressional Democrats questioned whether the order violated the Antideficiency Act, a federal law that prohibits the executive branch from spending money that Congress has not appropriated for a specific purpose, per the . The OBBBA funds were not appropriated for TSA employee salaries. If the legal challenge succeeds, TSA employees could be required to repay the funds.

The DHS shutdown began in mid-February 2026 when Congress failed to pass a full-year DHS appropriation before the fiscal year deadline. The dispute centers on a single policy disagreement: Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader CSChuck Schumer, refuse to fund ICE and CBP border patrol operations until the administration accepts accountability reforms for the Minneapolis killings. House Republicans and the White House refuse to condition DHS funding on any ICE or CBP restrictions.

At 42 days, the DHS shutdown is the longest single-agency funding lapse since the 2018-2019 partial government shutdown, which lasted 35 days, per . No other federal agency is affected because DHS is the only department operating without an appropriation.

Don Davis, MGMarie Gluesenkamp Perez, and Henry Cuellar are swing-district Democrats who have broken with party leadership on immigration votes when they've calculated that political survival requires distance from national Democratic positions. Davis represents a 🌲North Carolina district Trump carried in 2024. Gluesenkamp Perez won her 🌲Washington seat by 2 points in 2022 and has repeatedly broken with House Democrats on immigration votes. Cuellar has faced primary challenges from the left on immigration policy and has consistently supported DHS funding, per .

None of the three publicly explained their vote in the hours after the bill passed. Democratic leadership did not formally threaten discipline for the crossover votes.

Senate Majority Leader JTJohn Thune had pushed a full DHS funding bill for several weeks before the Senate finally advanced the partial bill excluding ICE and CBP. The partial bill was the Senate's first successful DHS funding vote in 42 days. Thune said he would not bring the chamber back early from the Easter recess to consider the House stopgap, effectively setting mid-April as the earliest possible date for any resolution, per .

The shutdown's continuation into a seventh week means it will likely still be in effect when the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on April 1 in the birthright citizenship case and when Congress returns to face a second DHS funding deadline alongside debt ceiling negotiations.