Congressional GOP leaders said Wednesday they will quickly move to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown after President Donald Trump set a hard deadline for Republicans to fund immigration enforcement.
The statement from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson comes after Trump set a June 1 deadline for Republicans to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the party-line budget process called reconciliation — giving them an off-ramp from the weekslong fight over the administration’s immigration enforcement strategy that has been at the heart of the DHS shutdown.
“In the coming days, Republicans in the Senate and House will be following through on the President’s directive by fully funding the entire Department of Homeland Security on two parallel tracks: through the appropriations process and through the reconciliation process,” Thune and Johnson said in a joint statement.
A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, said the administration supports the GOP leaders’ plan. The White House and congressional Republican leadership have been working since late last week to mutually agree on a reconciliation plan before Congress returns on April 13, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations and granted anonymity to describe them.
