ICE agents would have to wear uniforms and body cameras, but could still cover faces, under bipartisan Homeland Security bill

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement agents face new accountability measures and a modest cut to their deportation budget in a bipartisan funding package unveiled Tuesday by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state and her fellow negotiators in Congress.

Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, negotiated the final four funding bills needed to fund the government with the panel’s Republican chair, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, and their counterparts in the House. The legislation would provide funding through the end of September for the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Transportation and several smaller agencies. Its release came 10 days before short-term funding for those parts of the government is set to run out.

Federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Patrol – the latter often operating far from their usual territory near the northern and southern borders – have been engaged in an aggressive campaign to round up immigrants living in the country without legal status. Public opposition to their tactics has grown after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, and Democrats in Congress sought to use the funding negotiations to force agents to change their conduct.

“What we have seen from Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is frankly sick and un-American,” Murray said in a statement. “ICE is out-of-control, terrorizing people, including American citizens, and actively making our communities less safe.”

The Homeland Security funding bill keeps ICE’s overall funding at current levels – consistent with Murray’s demand that it not increase, which she laid out in an interview with The Spokesman-Review on Thursday – but reduces the agency’s budget for enforcement and removal operations by $115 million. It also requires agents to wear body cameras and uniforms, except when they’re working undercover, but other measures that many Democrats have demanded were left out.

“There is much more we must do to rein in DHS, which I will continue to press for,” Murray said. “But the hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need.”

The top Democrat on the House’s immigration subcommittee, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Seattle, has led a group of progressives in the House in demanding other reforms, such as requiring agents to wear identification, barring them from covering their faces and requiring a judge’s warrant before they enter a home or business. In a statement Tuesday, she said the compromise bill negotiated by Murray “simply does not meet the moment we face in this country with the lawlessness of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents.”

“I understand that this is due to the complete refusal of Republicans to hold this Administration accountable,” Jayapal said. “However, without real accountability and guardrails, I simply cannot support this bill.”

In the House, where only a simple majority is required to pass bills, the Republican majority can advance the legislation regardless of opposition from Jayapal and other Democrats. The Senate’s filibuster rule, however, means that at least seven Democrats must vote with all 53 Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold required to pass appropriations bills.

At a time when the GOP controls both the House and Senate and President Donald Trump’s assertive use of executive power has relegated Congress to something less than a coequal branch of government, the appropriations process – a relatively low-profile, yearlong slog that involves compromise between the parties on funding every government program – has been a rare check on the president’s power. In that context, Murray may quietly be the most influential Democrat in the nation’s capital.

“These bills invest in working people across the country and utterly reject President Trump’s plan to defund our kids’ education, evict millions of families, and slash lifesaving medical research nearly in half,” the Washington senator said, referring to the entire spending package . “Because Democrats were at the table, this legislation staves off extreme cuts that would have raised families’ costs and jeopardized people’s health and livelihoods.”

Murray’s lengthy statements on the legislation reflect Democrats’ intraparty tension over voting to fund ICE, and she argued that because Republicans passed legislation in 2025 that gave ICE “a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill,” the idea that letting funding for Homeland Security lapse “might curb the lawlessness of this administration is not rooted in reality.”

In contrast, Collins’ GOP staff on the Senate Appropriations Committee released the funding legislation on Tuesday without comment. Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee, encouraged his party to back the bills.

“At a time when many believed completing the FY26 process was out of reach, we’ve shown that challenges are opportunities,” Cole said, referring to the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. “It’s time to get it across the finish line.”

House lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Tuesday evening and are expected to advance the funding legislation this week. Senators will return from a recess on Jan. 26, with less than a week to pass the bills before funding runs out at the end of the month.