--- title: ICE Funding Bill Passes House Absent Changes Democrats Sought description: Seven House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to pass the final tranche of annual spending bills, including the contested DHS measure. canonical: https://time.com/7357264/ice-funding-bill-dhs-congress/ author: Nik Popli article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-01-22T21:48:26.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-11T00:49:40.574Z article:section: Politics og:title: ICE Funding Bill Passes House Absent Changes Democrats Sought og:description: Seven House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to pass the final annual spending bills, including the DHS measure. og:url: https://time.com/7357264/ice-funding-bill-dhs-congress/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt110e940c6370e2f1/6998cd1007a30d04a377dac0/GettyImages-2255304597.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: House Lawmakers Vote On Extending Obamacare Subsidies And Overriding Trump Vetoes og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: ICE Funding Bill Passes House Absent Changes Democrats Sought twitter:description: Seven House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to pass the final annual spending bills, including the DHS measure. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt110e940c6370e2f1/6998cd1007a30d04a377dac0/GettyImages-2255304597.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Democrats Fought the ICE Funding Bill—and Why It Passed Anyway > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/)  ## Nik Popli Staff Writer Jan 22, 2026 9:48 PM UTC  House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, speaks alongside fellow Democrats—Reps. Pete Aguilar and Katherine Clark—at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 8, 2026. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, speaks alongside fellow Democrats—Reps. Pete Aguilar and Katherine Clark—at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 8, 2026. Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images  by [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/)  ## Nik Popli Staff Writer Jan 22, 2026 9:48 PM UTC Amid a growing national backlash over federal immigration agents in Minneapolis and other cities, Democrats in Congress seized on negotiations over funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, hoping to rein in an agency they say is operating with too few guardrails. But after a bitter internal debate and under pressure to avoid another government shutdown, seven House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans on Thursday to approve the final tranche of annual spending bills, including the contested Department of Homeland Security measure, sending the package to the Senate as Congress races to keep the government open past Jan. 30. The 220 to 207 vote came even as House Democratic leaders and many rank-and-file lawmakers said the bill did too little to restrain Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a moment when the agency is facing a wave of public backlash over its aggressive tactics and its role in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. The seven House Democrats who ultimately voted for the DHS spending bill were Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Laura Gillen of New York, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Tom Suozzi of New York. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote against it. Prior to the vote, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and his top deputies, Reps. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California, announced in a closed-door caucus meeting that they would oppose the Homeland Security bill, arguing that it lacked meaningful guardrails as ICE expanded operations in places like Minneapolis, where a 37-year-old mother of three, Renée Good, was shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this month. The bill allocates $64.4 billion to DHS, including about $10 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is on par with current levels. House Democratic leaders sharpened their objections on Thursday, accusing Republicans of refusing to impose even basic limits on an agency they say has grown increasingly unmoored from legal and constitutional constraints. “ICE is out of control, and operating in far too many ways in a lawless fashion, and the American people know it,” Jeffries said at a news conference. He argued that Americans deserved an ICE agency that conducted itself “in a manner consistent with every other law enforcement agency in the country,” adding that it was “using taxpayer dollars to brutalize American citizens and law-abiding immigrant families.” Jeffries laid out a series of changes Democrats said they had pushed for in the legislation but failed to secure: judicial warrant requirements before agents could seize American citizens, mandates for body cameras, explicit limits on the use of force by agents, and a ban on ICE agents wearing masks during operations. He also called for prohibiting agents from entering houses of worship, hospitals and schools and for barring the detention or deportation of U.S. citizens. “These are the things that we will continue to push for,” Jeffries said. “Today, tomorrow, this week, next week, this month, next month until ICE is brought under control.” Some of those ideas failed to make it into the final bill. While the measure would fund body cameras for agents, reduce ICE enforcement and removal operations by $115 million, and cut detention beds by 5,500, it does not include outright bans on detaining U.S. citizens or using certain forms of force—omissions that critics said rendered the changes inadequate. Further complicating the debate: the Big, Beautiful Bill Trump signed last summer included an additional $75 billion for ICE, funding that is not affected by the funding bill that passed Thursday. “These reforms aren’t enough,” Aguilar told reporters. “Their lawlessness has to stop.” Yet even as many Democrats voted against the Homeland Security bill, others supported it, citing the limits of their power in a Republican-controlled Congress and the risks of pushing the government closer to another shutdown. The issue was especially charged for Democrats in swing districts, who had reason to fear a vote against Homeland Security funding would be used against them in this year's midterm elections. Rep. Cuellar, a Democratic member of the Appropriations Committee who helped craft the bill, said his party had secured at least some oversight over the department and curbed the ability of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to unilaterally shift funds. “It’s not everything we wanted,” he said, “but Democrats don’t control the House, the Senate or the White House.” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, echoed that argument, warning that denying funding altogether could worsen the situation by handing Trump greater discretion through a stopgap funding law. “The hard truth,” she [said](https://www.murray.senate.gov/appropriations-committees-release-remaining-funding-bills/), “is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need.” Still, other Democratic Senators made clear on Thursday that they would not vote for it. “This DHS budget was never going to solve all these problems or rein in all of DHS's abuse,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut [wrote on social media](https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2014364725774037176?s=20). “But we could demand real funding restrictions in the bill - simply to make sure DHS is following the law - to get our votes. Like stopping DHS from moving personnel - e.g. CBP - out of their budgeted missions; requiring warrants for arrests; restoring training/identification protocols. I know our negotiators had a hard job, but the truth is there are no meaningful new restraints in this bill." DHS funding became especially contentious after the Jan. 7 killing of Good during an enforcement operation. Thousands of federal officers have been deployed to Minnesota since December as part of what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest immigration enforcement effort in history. A week after Good’s death, another ICE officer shot an undocumented Venezuelan man during an arrest, and operations have since expanded to other states. Videos of masked agents aggressively detaining people—including U.S. citizens—have circulated widely, fueling protests and sharpening Democratic demands for stronger restrictions on the agency. Further inflaming the issue this week was images of [Liam Ramos](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyrrqwxpz7o), a 5-year-old boy who was detained by ICE agents along with his father in Minnesota, prompting strong pushback from local officials. Republicans have defended the ICE agents as essential to enforcing immigration laws and protecting public safety. Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina said Democrats were attacking the “authority, dignity and work” of federal agents rather than grappling with the realities of immigration enforcement. “We either enforce our immigration laws or they are meaningless,” Foxx said on the House floor. “We either give them the support they need to confront and arrest the world’s worst criminals, or we don’t.” The Senate now takes up the package under the shadow of the approaching Jan. 30 deadline. Failure to act would risk another government shutdown—the second in four months—reviving memories of the last lapse in funding that rattled financial markets and left hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed or working without pay for a record 43 days. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7357264/ice-funding-bill-dhs-congress/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7357264/ice-funding-bill-dhs-congress/"},"headline":"Why Democrats Fought the ICE Funding Bill—and Why It Passed Anyway","datePublished":"2026-01-22T21:48:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-11T00:49:40.574Z","description":"Seven House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to pass the final tranche of annual spending bills, including the contested DHS measure.","url":"https://time.com/7357264/ice-funding-bill-dhs-congress/","keywords":["Congress"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt110e940c6370e2f1/6998cd1007a30d04a377dac0/GettyImages-2255304597.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nik Popli","jobTitle":"Staff Writer","url":"https://time.com/author/nik-popli/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt110e940c6370e2f1/6998cd1007a30d04a377dac0/GettyImages-2255304597.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"House Lawmakers Vote On Extending Obamacare Subsidies And Overriding Trump Vetoes","caption":"House Lawmakers Vote On Extending Obamacare Subsidies And Overriding Trump Vetoes","creditText":"Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/congress/","name":"Congress"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7357264/ice-funding-bill-dhs-congress/","name":"Why Democrats Fought the ICE Funding Bill—and Why It Passed Anyway"}}]}] ```