WASHINGTON — The U.S. House approved a spending package Tuesday to reopen the vast majority of the federal government, with 21 Democrats, including Congresswoman Terri Sewell, joining most Republicans to support the measure.
Alabama’s House Republicans voted to pass the roughly $1.2 trillion package, while the state’s two Democrats were split, with Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, opposing it. The vote was 217-214, with 21 Republicans voting with a majority of Democrats against the spending bills.
The package will fund multiple agencies through September and temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks while lawmakers negotiate over restrictions on immigration enforcement.
After the vote, Sewell, D-Birmingham, explained her reasons for voting “yes” on the package.
“After the horrifying and deadly events in Minnesota, Americans across the political spectrum agree that ICE under the Trump Administration has gone too far and needs serious reform,” she said.
“This bill gives Democrats greater time and leverage to negotiate with Republicans on a set of guardrails to curb ICE’s reckless conduct while keeping other services up and running that are essential to the safety and well-being of the American people.”
Figures told Alabama Daily News he opposed the package, which included the DHS stopgap bill, because he said seeing recent actions by some federal law enforcement agents, along with Homeland Security leadership, has been “incredibly saddening and incredibly unfortunate.”
“It is literally costing people’s lives and jeopardizing basic American freedoms, and I could not support continuing that for another two weeks,” he said.
The congressman added that he wants to see reforms that ensure federal officers operate “in a way that is consistent with the foundational values and principles and constitutionality that we have in this country.”
The measure provides funding to keep the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Transportation, among others, open through the rest of the fiscal year.
“The path forward in this legislation reflects President Trump’s negotiations and direction to avoid a long-term partial shutdown and keep the government open without further disruptions,” Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Haleyville, chair of the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said on the House floor.
Now, the intense debate over how to fund Homeland Security past Feb. 13 begins. Democrats are pushing for reforms to rein in ICE.
Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Birmingham, said some Democrats “overplayed their hand” by calling to defund ICE when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act already provided $75 billion for the agency over four years.
“If (Democrats) defund anybody, they’re gonna defund TSA,” Palmer told Alabama Daily News. “They’re gonna defund FEMA at a time when several states are in a really bad place from the two winter storms that have hit.”
Sewell highlighted that her vote in favor of the modified spending package was focused on supporting TSA and disaster assistance, rather than ICE.
In the fight for ICE reform, one of the Democrats’ demands is to require federal officers have a judicial warrant, not an administrative warrant, to make arrests. But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., already threw cold water on that idea, showing the deep divisions that will plague DHS funding negotiations this week and next.
“Adding a whole new layer of judicial warrant requirements is an unworkable proposal,” Johnson told reporters.
President Donald Trump signed the package into law Tuesday afternoon, with appropriators standing behind him, including Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala, and Aderholt, in the Oval Office. His signature brings to a close 11 of the 12 annual appropriations bills.
“So 96% of the government being funded, your priorities put in place, Mr. President, so that we can make the country safer, we can make it more prosperous,” Britt said at the signing.