US Senate approves deal to fund government and discuss ICE restrictions

The US Senate approved a major government funding package on Friday, after the killings of two US citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis upended spending talks and gave the out-of-power party rare leverage over Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

In a 71-29 tally, the Senate overcame opposition from a handful of Republicans to rally behind a deal the president struck with Democrats, an unusual display of bipartisanship as tensions rise nationally over the presence of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents in US cities.

The package still needs approval by the House of Representatives, which is out of session and not scheduled to return until Monday, meaning a partial shutdown of the federal government was expected to begin when funding lapses at midnight Friday.

If the House approves the measure swiftly, the impact of the funding lapse is likely to be minimal as most federal employees don’t work over the weekend, and Trump has pledged to sign the package into law as soon as it reaches his desk.

The deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both US citizens shot dead in Minneapolis amid a surge of immigration enforcement agents, prompted Senate Democrats to block passage of a measure funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE. That jeopardized a broader legislative package intended to continue funding through September for a slew of government departments.

The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, outlined a series of reforms to federal agents he wants codified in the DHS’s funding measure, including the requirement that officers wear body cameras, abide by a code of conduct and cease wearing masks and conducting “roving patrols” aimed at people they suspect of being illegally in the United States.

“If our colleagues are not willing to enact real change – real, strong change – they should not expect Democratic votes,” Schumer said, following the Friday evening vote. “We have only a few days to deliver real progress for the American people; the eyes of the nation are watching.”

The Senate approved the package after it rejected a series of amendments, including one offered by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont that sought to repeal the $75bn in additional funding for ICE provided by Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” and transfer it to Medicaid. The amendment failed, but in a sign of the shifting politics, the proposal earned two Republican votes.

“We don’t need a domestic army in America to terrorize people; we need to guarantee healthcare to all Americans,” Sanders said. Republicans argued it was an attempt to “defund” the agency and give healthcare to undocumented immigrants.

While the package easily cleared the 60-vote threshold needed to pass in the Senate, many Democrats stuck to their pledge not to approve any additional funding for DHS without clear restrictions on the way ICE agents operate.

“I meant what I said: I refuse to fund an agency that lets federal agents kill US citizens with impunity,” Arizona senator Ruben Gallego said on Friday. “We need real reform and accountability on paper.”

Schumer’s office announced on Thursday evening that a deal had been reached with Republicans to quickly pass through the Senate five spending bills that had bipartisan agreement and would continue the operations of departments including defense, labor, and health and human services through September. Funding for the DHS would be addressed with a stopgap measure lasting two weeks, which would allow time for negotiations over the Democrats’s demands for reforms to immigration enforcement.

“This is a pretty somber moment that we are in,” said senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee who led negotiations on the spending bill. “I very seriously doubt the White House would have agreed to renegotiate constraints on DHS, if not for the national outcry from the American people.”

The bill next goes to the House for approval.

“The earliest floor action we could have is Monday, so we could inevitably be in a short shutdown situation,” the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, told USA Today. “But the House is going to do its job. We want to get the government funded, as does the president.”

The agreement had been expected to be put to a vote by the Senate on Thursday evening, but Republican Lindsey Graham reportedly held up the process of passing it unanimously, demanding the removal of a provision undoing the ability of lawmakers to sue the government if their phone call records were obtained by the FBI as part of its investigation into Trump’s 2020 election meddling.

An earlier version of the spending bill passed by the House last week repeals that law.

The agreement represents an opportunity for Democrats to impose guardrails on Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which began immediately after he took office a year ago and has seen masked federal agents fan out to major cities nationwide.

The result has been hundreds of thousands of arrests and deportations, but also killings by ICE agents, detentions of US citizens, and complaints from local leaders and advocacy groups of brutal tactics by officers and violations of rights.

“We’re going to have to evaluate what the real opportunity is to get dramatic change at the Department of Homeland Security. It needs to be bold, it needs to be meaningful, and it needs to be transformative,” the Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said on Friday.

But it has come together too late to prevent several federal government departments from closing their doors or curtailing services over the weekend and perhaps on Monday, the first business day when the shutdown will be in effect.

Should the spending deal pass the Senate, its reception in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives remains uncertain. The chamber had passed both the DHS bill and the five spending bills last week, with seven Democrats joining with the GOP to advance the latter despite calls that it be held up over Good’s killing.

However, several rightwing lawmakers have demanded that if the measures return to the chamber, they be coupled with legislation conservatives have demanded such as the Save Act, which would impose identification requirements to vote that critics say would disenfranchise swaths of Americans.

“EVERY SINGLE APPROPRIATIONS BILL THAT IS VOTED OUT OF THE HOUSE MUST HAVE THE SAVE ACT ATTACHED,” the Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna said Friday.

Their opposition could complicate passage of the spending measures, since Republicans control the chamber with 218 seats to the Democrats’ 213. Jeffries warned that Republicans will be blamed if their infighting prevents passage of the spending bills.

“The demands being made by far-right extremists in the House Republican conference are going nowhere, and if, for whatever reason, Speaker Johnson bends the knee to the far right, then Republicans are going to shut the government down,” he said.

Even if negotiations stall over restrictions on the administration’s immigration crackdown and DHS spending lapses, it is unlikely to halt ICE’s deportation operations. The agency received $75bn from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year that it could use, and the Trump administration could also mandate that its employees continue working during a shutdown.