2026 Government Shutdown: Latest News and Impact on ICE

One of the most confusing federal-government shutdowns in living memory began at midnight on January 31 when the stopgap-spending authority that ended the last government shutdown in November ran out. The shutdown was triggered by Democratic fury (and Republican misgivings) over ICE and Border Patrol atrocities in Minneapolis. But Congress had to unravel and end the shutdown before it could begin serious negotiations on new guidelines for immigration enforcement.

The Departments of Defense, Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Transportation, and State — along with the department that supervises immigration enforcement, Homeland Security — shut down on Friday night. Other agencies remained open because spending bills affecting them passed both houses of Congress before the Minneapolis crisis began.

But the partial shutdown will end later today after two close votes in the House approved a Senate bill to reopen all government departments other than DHS. That agency will receive stopgap spending authority until February 13 to allow for very difficult negotiations over immigration enforcement policies and tactics.

Here’s how we got here and what we know about what will happen next:

The current crisis began when the House combined six regular appropriations bills into one huge package after allowing a separate vote over DHS funding as protests against ICE were breaking out around the country (it passed narrowly with just seven Democratic votes). The House then adjourned, hoping to “jam” the Senate into approving the whole package and keeping the government fully open.

But after Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats withheld the votes needed to clear the spending package, demanding reforms in immigration enforcement. As the January 30 deadline approached, the White House became engaged in the dispute and cut a deal with Chuck Schumer to provide a separate two-week stopgap-spending bill for DHS to allow for further negotiations and pass the rest of the appropriations. This arrangement cleared the Senate late on January 30, with most Republicans and about half the Democrats going along. Because the earlier House package was changed by the Senate, the Trump-Schumer deal went back to the House for its approval. In the meantime, the affected federal departments had to shut down.

The House wasn’t privy to the Trump-Schumer deal, and there was grumbling over it in both party caucuses. House Democrats are sensitive to the explosion of grassroots anger at the Senate Democrats who failed to use their leverage to either force major ICE reforms in exchange for keeping the government open, or to defund ICE altogether. Hardcore conservative House Republicans are upset about a rumored White House “pivot” away from total support for aggressive ICE tactics. Some wanted to attach provocative anti-immigrant conditions to the Senate deal, like measures to defund “sanctuary cities” or a forced Senate vote on the SAVE Act, which would impose new citizenship-ID requirements for voting. Democrats made it clear such amendments would be unacceptable poison pills that would extend the shutdown indefinitely.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had hoped to get around these grumbling factions with a quick vote right after the House reconvened on Monday to approve the Senate deal under a suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds vote. But in recognition of the divisions in his own ranks, and likely annoyed that he was left out of the Trump-Schumer negotiations, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries informed Johnson that he couldn’t promise the requisite number of votes to make the suspension of the rules feasible.

So Johnson was forced to go through the laborious process of getting a vote set up via House passage of the “rule” for consideration of the Senate deal. By ancient tradition, the minority party won’t vote for the majority’s “rule,” so the Speaker was forced to obtain must virtually every Republican vote for it. By all accounts, Trump spent Monday twisting arms and quelling dissent. House Freedom Caucus types asked for and probably received assurances from Trump that he won’t back down too much on ICE or on mass deportation generally if and when negotiations on the DHS spending bill ever happen. The rule passed by one vote with just one Republican (Thomas Massie) dissenting.

Passage of the rule brought the Senate deal to the House floor, where it passed by a 217-214 vote, with 21 Democrats voting for it (mostly outspoken “moderates” and some very senior members in safe seats) and 21 Republicans voting against it (mostly House Freedom Caucus members). It looks like Johnson figured out how many Democrats he could get to vote for the bill and gave an identical number of Republicans a “free vote” to oppose it. The outcome showed that nobody really wantsed the partial shutdown to continue, but everyone is aware that once everything other than the DHS bill is resolved, Democratic leverage to secure restraints on immigration-enforcement agents will be reduced significantly. Trump will sign the bill momentarily and the shutdown will officially end.

Absolutely not. Negotiations haven’t begun, and there are signs of a deepening partisan rift on the subject. Senate Democrats announced a list of substantive demands prior to the Trump-Schumer procedural deal that included a requirement for judicial warrants before ICE–Border Patrol arrests; coordination with local law enforcement (and deference to their use-of-force rules); and an end to masking. Any or all of these demands could be deal-breakers with the White House, aside from whatever additional demands House Democrats insist upon.

We’ll know soon enough: The Senate-passed CR for DHS expires on February 13. If no substantive deal is struck that can get through both Houses and and also secure Trump’s signature, the options are either another CR to allow more time for negotiations or a new shutdown of DHS (which includes, in addition to immigration enforcement, agencies like FEMA and the Coast Guard). The only good thing about these scenarios is that at least it will be clear to everyone what the fight’s about.

This piece has been updated throughout.