A small group of moderate House Democrats joined Republicans on Thursday to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, overcoming a rebellion from most Democrats angered by ICE’s aggressive operations in Minneapolis and other U.S. cities.
The vote was 220 to 207, with seven Democrats breaking with their party and voting yes. The House of Representatives also passed a separate package of bills to fund other federal agencies in a broad, bipartisan vote in an effort to avoid a partial government shutdown on Jan. 31.
In an unexpected twist, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to add an amendment to the package, repealing a Senate-authored law that allows eight specific Republican senators to sue the government for at least $500,000 in damages after their phone records were collected as part of a Jan. 6 investigation.
MPs from both parties have been criticism of that law since it passed as part of the deal to end the government shutdown two months ago. Thursday’s vote puts the Senate in a bind, forcing it to accept the repeal or shut down the government next week, while the House of Representatives will be on recess.
The House combined the repeal amendment and six of its passed spending bills into one package. It now heads to the Senate, where Appropriations Committee leaders signed the funding deal. The package represents the final tranche of the 12 spending bills Congress must pass each year to keep the government open and will fund it through the end of September.
“You know, we’re not here for just a stopgap, a temporary solution,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said before the vote. “We are here to get the job done by providing funding for the entire year.”
The successful DHS vote came as some on the far left called on Democrats to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an ICE officer fatally shot Renee Good, a Minneapolis woman and U.S. citizen, this month.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that federal agents “sometimes make mistakes” in enforcing his immigration crackdown, an admission that comes after weeks of violent confrontations, including the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.
And in a sign that the ICE issue has become a major political issue for Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and his top lieutenants joined rank-and-file Democrats in voting against the DHS funding billand said it lacked adequate guardrails and accountability for ICE.
Liberal Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., lead negotiator of the broader funding deal, also voted no on the DHS bill — an unusual move for the House Democrats’ top appropriator.
“ICE is out of control and, in far too many ways, operating in a lawless manner,” Jeffries told reporters, accusing the agency of “using taxpayer dollars to inflict atrocities on the American people,” including by killing Good “in cold blood.”
The leaders made that decision even after DeLauro and other top Democratic appropriators — who are working closely with the leaders — struck a bipartisan, bicameral deal to fund the government through the 2026 budget year, which ends September 30.
“You have to ask every individual member who is going to vote in the best interest of their district why they chose to vote one way or another,” Jeffries said when asked about the division over ICE.
The seven Democrats who voted in favor were: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, both of Texas; Jared Golden of Maine; Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington State; Don Davis of North Carolina; and Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi, both from New York.
NBC News has obtained the cellphone video taken by Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote no.
Some Democrats lamented that their party had not fought as hard for ICE guardrails as it did for an extension of Affordable Care Act funds when they enforced a 43-day shutdown last fall. (A group of eight Senate Democrats ultimately conceded without concessions from the ACA.)
“Instead of explaining to the American people where we stand and what the immigration system is and why it’s broken — it’s broken, but why is it broken and what are the solutions to it? — we just have a bunch of Democrats trying to get tougher on immigration than the Republicans. It’s never worked,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. “You can’t outmaneuver Republicans because then you lose your base and you can’t get any of the Republicans to come to you.”
She said many Democrats are afraid to take pro-immigrant positions after Trump used immigration in his 2024 campaign victory.
Jayapal suggested that DeLauro and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top two Democratic appropriators, negotiated DHS funding as part of the broader bill because “they wanted to get this all done. Appropriators often — they just want to get the bills through.”
DeLauro and Murray have pointed out that Democrats did Certainly $20 million for body cameras for ICE personnel, as well as cuts to ICE funding for enforcement and removal operations and the number of detention beds.
While most Democrats are treading carefully on immigration, others in the party are going all out against ICE as they try to channel public backlash toward the agency. Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., facing a fierce primary challenge from the left, has authored the Abolish the ICE lawwhich would dismantle the agency.
Meanwhile, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., introduced the MELT ICE Act this week, which end DHS funding to detain or monitor immigrantsand redirect that money to healthcare, housing and other social services in local communities.
Neither stands a chance of passage among Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Murray focused instead on a series of victories she said Democrats scored in the broader government funding package, including funding for child care, housing assistance, mental health care and Pell Grants — in many cases thwarting Trump’s proposed cuts.
“There is much more we need to do to rein in DHS, which I will continue to push for,” Murray added. “But the hard truth is that Democrats must gain political power to exercise the kind of accountability we need.”
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