What Happens If DHS Shuts Down
Funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will expire at midnight tonight. Absent a last-minute agreement to fund DHS today, it will commence a shutdown on Monday. The other 11 appropriations bills have been funded for the rest of Fiscal Year (FY) 2026, so the rest of the government will continue operating as usual.
While this shutdown will be unique in that it only affects one cabinet department and the agencies within it, it will not result in a shutdown of the entire agency.
The DHS appropriations bill typically funds most of the activities the department undertakes, including the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Secret Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other related agencies. In FY 2025, this funding totaled $65.0 billion for base activities and $22.5 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund administered by FEMA.
However, the reconciliation law enacted by Congress in July 2025 – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) – included nearly $180 billion for DHS agencies. Most significant among the agencies receiving funding are CBP, which received $12 billion for personnel and equipment (a bit more than one year’s worth of funding), and ICE, which received $45 billion for detention capacity as well as $30 billion broadly for operations. U.S. Secret Service, FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and DHS generally also received pots of funding from OBBBA, which will allow certain operations to continue at those agencies.
As a result of the OBBBA funding – and the requirement that DHS essential employees, such as TSA officers, continue to work despite a potential lack of funding – only about 8% of DHS’s total workforce will be required to be furloughed during the shutdown. It is unclear how many of these employees will continue to be paid during the shutdown, but DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X during the October-November 2025 shutdown that many would, including the Coast Guard specifically funded by OBBBA. Other agency functions that are funded by user fees will also continue to operate, and their employees will likely be paid. We estimate that roughly two-thirds of the DHS budget could be funded by OBBBA funding.
Congress should abandon the practice of wasteful government shutdowns, whether partial or full, and fund appropriations for the remainder of the fiscal year.
