Johnson, Thune announce plan to end DHS shutdown but potentially face a long road

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced the Republican-controlled Congress “in the coming days” will fund the Department of Homeland Security through both the appropriations process and reconciliation process — but the track they’re pursuing leaves open the possibility that it may take longer than President Donald Trump had wanted.

House Republicans appear to have caved to those in the Senate, who wanted to fund DHS with the exception of immigration enforcement, which Democrats supported.

To tackle that thornier issue, which prompted the shutdown in the first place, Republicans say they will use the reconciliation process, which avoids the filibuster in the Senate. However, doing so would require them to rely on their incredibly thin margins in both chambers.

“In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited,” the top Republicans said in a statement on Wednesday.

June 1 deadline

The announcement came shortly after Trump publicly demanded Republicans use reconciliation — a process that avoids the filibuster in the Senate — to send him a bill no later than June 1 that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

“We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won’t be able to stop us,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform on Wednesday.

Lawmakers left the Capitol on Friday for a two-week recess after failing to reach a deal to fund DHS. Democrats demanded reforms to ICE and CBP after two American citizens were fatally shot by federal agents during the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year.

The partial shutdown, which began on Feb. 14, is now the longest in U.S. history.

The Senate unanimously passed legislation last week to fund all of DHS except for ICE and CBP with the aim of later funding these agencies through reconciliation, but the House rejected the Senate’s bill. 

Instead, House Republicans pushed through a short-term bill to fund the entire department for eight weeks at current levels, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.

Senate plan to fund everything but immigration enforcement

It’s unclear how this will play out over the next several days, but House Republicans could to try to pass the Senate bill during pro-forma sessions over recess.

ABC News has asked Johnson’s office about how the House will take up the Senate’s DHS funding bill. 

“While we hoped they would accept the 60-day [continuing resolution] to fund the Department entirely so that bipartisan negotiations could continue, it is now abundantly clear that Democrats place allegiance to their radical left-wing base above all else — including their own power of the purse — which means open borders and protecting criminal illegal aliens,” Johnson and Thune said.

“That is not acceptable to Republicans in Congress, nor is it to the American people. We cannot allow Democrats to any longer put the safety of the American public at risk through their open border policies, so we are taking that off the table,” they stated.

Funding border security

Additionally, Johnson and Thune said Republicans will move forward to fund border security and immigration enforcement for three years through budget reconciliation — a legislative tool that gives Congress an expedited way to move forward certain spending and tax bills. 

A key advantage of the process is that reconciliation legislation is not subject to a filibuster, meaning it can be passed with a simple majority vote in the Senate instead of 60 votes.

But with such small GOP majorities in both chambers, passing a bill this way would require almost every single congressional Republican to endorse it. Gaining that support is not a given, and could prove quite time consuming, making Trump’s June 1 deadline rather ambitious.

Trump urged unity in his social media post on Wednesday demanding action by Republicans.

“Through simple unification, Republicans can do this without the Democrats!” his post read.