The risk of a partial government shutdown at the end of the month is spiking now that Democrats are demanding policy changes at ICE in exchange for funding the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats in the Senate have the power to block any funding bill ahead of the January 30 deadline. 

The call for reforms at ICE follow the shooting of Renee Good, a Minnesota woman who was present at an anti-ICE protest when she was shot and killed. The Department of Homeland Security has already said that the agent in question did nothing wrong. 

Shortly after Good was shot and killed, Senate Democrats threatened to throw a wrench into the bipartisan budget process. The House was due to vote on a funding package for DHS this week, though those plans were scrapped once it appeared that Senate Democrats may not help break the 60-vote threshold for final passage. 

“Noem is once again trying to obstruct oversight at ICE facilities. This comes just days after we found out DHS LIED about a shooting in Maryland & we all saw the horrible killing of Renee Good,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, who sits on the Senate subcommittee charged with writing the DHS budget, said in a statement Monday. 

“We cannot just hope for better. No more money for DHS without accountability,” Mr. Van Hollen said. 

Senator Tina Smith, a retiring lawmaker from Minnesota, also says she likely cannot vote for any funding bill which does nothing to reform ICE’s policies. 

“I don’t know how I could vote for a funding bill for ICE — for the Department of Homeland Security — when so much of what they are doing is illegal,” Ms. Smith told MSNOW in an interview last week. 

Senator Chris Murphy, who serves as the top Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee overseeing DHS, has already proposed some modest reforms to ICE in exchange for his support. 

“Right now, that department is full of unlawful activity,” Mr. Murphy told reporters on Monday night. “This would obviously be a very inopportune time to give the agency that is acting lawlessly a bunch more money.”

“ICE has so much money it has no idea what to do with it,” the Connecticut senator added. As part of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer, ICE received an additional $75 billion over the course of the next four years. During this fiscal year, ICE has nearly $29 billion at their disposal — a three-fold increase from President Biden’s final year in office.

Even more concerning for some members of Congress is Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s new policy restricting lawmakers’ ability to access DHS detention facilities unfettered. Since 2019, a law signed by Mr. Trump granted lawmakers the right to show up to facilities like ICE’s detention and deportation processing centers at a moment’s notice. That law has been renewed every year, including this past year thanks to Mr. Trump’s signature. 

Ms. Noem argues that the additional funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act allows her to require that lawmakers provide a seven-day notice to ICE facilities before showing up. Her department’s annual budget includes a provision allowing members to visit at any time, though the funding boost from the OBBBA is a separate pot of money which she can use to restrict access, she argues.  

Following the longest government shutdown in history last year, members of Congress passed some of its 12 annual funding bills to keep the government open through the end of the fiscal year, which comes on September 30. Some of the more contentious issues, however — including funding for the Defense Department, DHS, and the Internal Revenue Service — were kicked to January 30. 

It takes 60 votes in the Senate to end debate and move to final passage of the bill, meaning that if all Republicans and fewer than seven Democrats vote to block any DHS funding, then it cannot advance and a shutdown would begin for certain department.