“It’s that simple”: What House Democrats spoke about behind closed doors on the DHS funding bill
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First Things First
House Democrats walked into their weekly closed-door caucus meeting on Wednesday morning with few illusions about where the vote on the fiscal year 2026 Department of Homeland Security funding bill was headed. By the time they walked out, several members said they were even more firmly opposed.
The session—centered on presentations from Appropriations Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Appropriations DHS Ranking Member Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who outlined what they described as Republican concessions in the bill—quickly became less about persuasion than confirmation. Most members had already made up their minds, and leadership wasn’t trying to change them.
Cuellar told members the bill includes a series of Democratic guardrails aimed at increasing oversight of DHS, including additional resources for the department’s inspector general to monitor detention beds and enforcement activity. He also emphasized that, for the first time, Democrats inserted oversight language tied to the massive DHS funding boost approved through reconciliation—along with funding to preserve the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office—arguing that the inspector general would now have a role scrutinizing both regular appropriations and the reconciliation funds.
“ICE don’t give a fuck. They’ll put people on the floor if they have to—including American citizens,” a member, who like many in this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told me. “I don’t want to give DHS another penny until they’ve regained the American people’s trust that those resources won’t be used to terrorize people and communities. It’s that simple.”
