January 26, 2026
Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have a choice to make this week. And so do you. Senators can either – approve funding for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE – or— partially shut the United States government down at the end of the day on Friday. This video is going to explain the choices every single senator is going to have to make and what you can do to make sure they know how you feel about their choice.
But before you can know how you feel about all this – you need to understand the facts and what these Senators are actually voting on. It all comes down to several funding bills the house of representatives passed last week. I told you all about that in this video. In order to avoid a government shutdown at four days from today — Senators must also pass those same funding bills. In order to pass — each of those funding bills needs to get 60 votes. The funding bills the senate is taking up are for the departments of defense, transportation, housing and urban development, health and human services, labor, education and homeland security – which of course oversees immigrations and customs enforcement – or ice.
When I talk about a funding bill – that means the money each department gets every single year – like their annual budget. I want to make this clear that funding is coming from *you*!!! It’s your taxpayer money. The homeland security bill that passed in the house last week gives DHA a total of $64.4 billion for the fiscal year. Of that – customs and border protection gets $18.3 billion and ice gets $10 billion which is the same about of money it got last year. And keep in mind – this is just the regular annual funding – which is on top of the money the republicans already gave homeland security and ice as additional funding in the big beautiful bill over the summer. When the republicans passed that bill with zero democratic votes – they gave homeland security a whopping $191 billion dollars. That included $75 billion dollars for ice. And that money has helped homeland security hire more ICE and CBP agents and give them huge signing bonuses and fund President Trump’s massive immigration enforcement efforts we have been seen across the country.
That $191 billion is already done that’s not part of the current bill the Senators are going to be voting on. This week they’re only voting on the annual appropriations bill….the regular $64.4 billion for DHS… make sense? It’s also worth noting the homeland security funding bill that passed the house last week– does have *some new guardrails built in for ice. It requires DHS to provide monthly updates on how that big beautiful bill money is being spent. It allocates $20 million to be used for the purchase and operation of body cameras for ice and CPB officers when they are engaged in operations with the public. And it directs DHS to train all ICE and CBP officers on de-escalation tactics and on citizen’s rights to record interactions with officers.
But that is not enough for some Democrats in the Senate. They think Secretary Kristi Noem, homeland security and ICE need to be reined in and they think giving ICE more money without more guardrails is the wrong answer. And that matters in the Senate – because as I told you these kinds of bills need 60 votes? That means, this homeland security appropriations bill cannot pass without at least 7 Senate Democrats voting yes.
So what are the options?
Well there are two paths the Senate Majority Leader can take. He can put all these funding bills together in one package and have one vote….or he separate the homeland security bill from the others and have two separate votes. That’s exactly what happened in the House. So option one – if Majority Leader Thune does not separate homeland security — all 53 Senate Republicans vote yes on the bill as it is written, no changes – and 7 Senate Democrats join them. Trump signs it. We don’t have a government shutdown – and ICE and homeland security keep operating as they are right now.
Option two – if these bills are all packaged together — all the Senate Democrats and Independents stick together and all vote no on all of these funding bills which would force all of those departments to shut down at the end of the day on January 30th. So we would be looking at – not a full government shutdown like we saw in the fall – but a partial government shutdown of only the departments that were not funded.
Or option three – the homeland security funding bill can be voted on separately from all the other funding bills which is how they did it in the House. Then Democrats, Independents and Republicans can vote yes on all the funding bills for all the other government departments and keep those departments open, but democrats and independents can vote no specifically on the homeland security piece of the bill. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is calling for that choice saying the entire homeland security funding bill needs to be rewritten in light of what’s happening in Minnesota.
So – what can you do? Look it’s up to you to decide how you feel about what’s happening with Trump’s immigration crack down and how you feel about what ICE is doing on the streets of America. And regardless of how you feel – right now is the exact right time to tell your senator how you feel about it. You have power right now. Not next week, not in a few days. Right now. Your Senator is not hard to find – you only have two….each state gets two Senators. To find yours — all you do is go to senate.gov and click on find your senator. There you will find contact information for your senator’s Washington DC office and their local office in your state.
