Democratic senators threaten a partial government shutdown if ICE funding is not withdrawn following the death of Alex Pretti

The outrage sparked by the death of U.S. citizen Alex Pretti at the hands of immigration agents last weekend has derailed what was thought to be a sure thing to approve funding for part of the government, potentially leading to a partial government shutdown later this week. The Senate will reconvene on Tuesday in an attempt to approve a budget that includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol, the agencies responsible for Pretti’s fatal shooting as he tried to protect a woman from the agents’ attacks. Several Democratic senators who had been inclined to support the budget to avoid a partial shutdown have changed their minds and announced they will vote against it, further diminishing the likelihood of the proposal’s passage.

Sixty votes are required for passage, so at least seven Democratic lawmakers need to join the 53 Republicans. Washington State Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee and a key negotiator of the funding package, who had been urging her colleagues to vote for the bill, declared on X: “I will NOT support the DHS bill as it stands.” “Federal agents cannot murder people in broad daylight and face zero consequences,” Murray wrote.

The House of Representatives sent the six pending appropriations bills to the Senate in a single package, including $64.4 billion for the DHS, of which $10 billion is earmarked for ICE. Although Democrats had generally tried to remove the DHS funding from the package in order to pass the rest of the budgets, some opposition senators had indicated their willingness to support it. However, following Pretti’s death, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer warned that Democrats would not support it. “What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city,” he wrote on X. “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included,” he emphasized.

The hardening of the Democratic stance is a consequence of the Trump administration’s response to the death of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse at a veterans’ hospital, who was shot and killed by Border Patrol agents. The government has justified the officers’ actions by claiming that the victim was carrying a gun, but videos recorded by witnesses contradict the official version. The footage shows Pretti holding a phone in one hand and nothing in the other as he tries to protect a woman being pepper-sprayed. The agents threw him to the ground and beat him before shooting him.

If senators do not act by midnight on Friday, funding for the DHS and other federal agencies included in the six bills will expire. Republican leaders had hoped to avoid another government shutdown after the 43-day shutdown last fall, when Democrats refused to pass a bill that eliminated federal subsidies that make health insurance more affordable. Even some senators who voted for the budget at that time to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history have warned that they will not support the funding package this time. This is the case of Nevada Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who said in a statement that “the Trump Administration and Kristi Noem are putting undertrained, combative federal agents on the streets with no accountability. They are oppressing Americans and are at odds with local law enforcement. This is clearly not about keeping Americans safe, it’s brutalizing U.S. citizens and law-abiding immigrants.”

The brutal actions of federal agents — who are employing very aggressive tactics against the population protesting against the detention of migrants — have already raised tensions among Republicans themselves after the death of Renee Good, an American citizen who was killed on January 7 by shots fired by an ICE agent.

Republican lawmakers approved a major funding boost for ICE last year, but after the two shooting deaths in Minnesota, some are demanding answers from the Trump administration. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy said the Minneapolis shooting was “incredibly disturbing” and that “the credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake.” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said that “lawfully carrying a firearm does not justify federal agents killing an American — especially, as video footage appears to show, after the victim had been disarmed.” North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said any administration official who rushes to judgment or tries to obstruct an investigation “are doing an incredible disservice to the nation and to President Trump’s legacy.”

The progress Congress has made so far on the spending bills means that much of the federal government’s work would continue even if the Senate does not pass the new package. A bill Trump signed on Friday funds the Departments of Justice, Commerce, and the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the Army Corps of Engineers through the end of the fiscal year in September. The Department of Agriculture already had funding thanks to a previous measure, but other parts of the government, including the Department of Defense, continue to operate on a temporary budget that only guarantees funding through Friday.

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