WASHINGTON — A few minutes after 2 a.m. on Friday, Eric Schmitt, a Republican senator from Missouri, issued a threat on the Senate floor.
Via regular appropriations or a multi-step tactic called “budget reconciliation,” the Congress, Schmitt said, would give a new round of money to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, overriding Democrats’ objections.
“Either today or through reconciliation, we will fully fund ICE,” Schmitt said before trying to advance a bill that would give federal deportation agencies $100 billion for the next decade. “The filibuster cannot save you.”
New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat, rose from his desk and objected, halting Schmitt’s bill. For weeks, Democrats have had held out on a funding deal for the Department Homeland Security, which includes ICE, as they urged reforms to how the agency operates.
“All we’ve been demanding here is what the American people are demanding: body-worn cameras, no masks, keeping ICE agents out of our hospitals, schools and churches,” Kim said. “We will continue to fight for those reforms.”
The exchange between both men is a likely harbinger of what’s to come this year on Capitol Hill, where the White House and its Republican allies have prioritized President Donald Trump’s sweeping detention and deportation agenda, while Democrats, largely in the Senate, have wielded a legislative tool they once sought to eliminate in legislative negotiations.
That tool — the filibuster — which is Senate rule, not a law, gives the chamber’s minority party significant power. In 2022, almost every Democrat in the chamber, including Cory Booker of New Jersey, voted to eliminate the filibuster.
Now, Democrats are deploying it to halt Republican funding bills, causing headaches for Trump and his party in Congress. Because most bills require 60 “yes” votes in the Senate to advance, Democrats, who hold 47 seats, can block legislation if they stay together.
That’s the leverage they used in the fall to push for healthcare funding — a tactic that helped precipitate a weeks-long government shutdown — before eight Democrats broke ranks and cut a deal with Republicans, scuttling any prospect of new health insurance subsidies.
And it’s the same leverage Kim, Booker and the rest of their Democratic colleagues have used to push for reforms to ICE and Customs and Border Protection, another immigration agency under the Department of Homeland Security.
In the face of Democratic resistance, Republicans in the Senate, led by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who heads the Senate Budget Committee, threatened to cut out the Democrats altogether by passing a massive new law that would include new funding for immigration enforcement and the U.S. war against Iran.
Credit: (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)The Pentagon is expected to submit a $200 billion for the war, though that money has not been formally requested.
“I also think we have many opportunities to improve voter integrity through reconciliation,” Graham said, alluding to a restrictive bill Trump wants passed before the mid-terms in November.
Moments before Schmitt tried to pass his legislation, the Senate in a voice vote passed a bill to fund the DHS without providing money for ICE or CBP. Both agencies received multi-year funding from an immense tax policy law Republicans wrote and passed in the summer of 2025, making it effectively impossible to cut funding either.
If Trump signed it, the bill would end the shutdown of the agency, which has roiled the country’s airports as Transportation Security Administration agents have worked without pay for six weeks.
But after the Senate dispatched its bill to the House, House leaders rejected it and Republicans on Friday instead passed a short-term funding bill of their own, also unlikely to win Senate approval.
“We’re going to send that over to the Senate and we hope that they’ll accept that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.
Republicans trashed the Senate legislation, a move that will extend the partial shutdown of DHS, which also includes the Secret Service and the U.S. Coast Guard, which has a base in Cape May County.
“It is unbelievable that in the United States of America, we have Coast Guard members going to food banks, holding fundraisers, and struggling to make ends meet,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) in a statement Friday. His district includes the Coast Guard site in South Jersey.
Last month, Democrats issued a list of requests for immigration enforcement reform, in particular the demands for body cameras, sanctuary status for sensitive sites like churches and hospitals, and judge-signed warrants.
Democrats emerged from the latest bout of funding talks without any of those reforms.
The Trump administration for immigrant detention purposes purchased a warehouse in Roxbury Township, within Morris County, for about $130 million, about double the market value. It has also moved to extend the contract for the Elizabeth Detention Center, another ICE site.
Schmitt of Missouri, which Trump carried in 2024 with 58% of the vote, issued a warning to Democrats his party would this year hammer through more money to detain people in ICE.
“What’s coming next is going to supercharge deportation,” he said.
