Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said during a Sunday morning CNN appearance that his party’s caucus cannot support a government shutdown-averting bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which he claimed was “murdering American citizens.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a Saturday statement, vowed his party’s caucus “will not provide the votes” necessary to pass a spending package which includes a DHS funding bill. The declaration came hours after Border Patrol agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Murphy appeared to agree with Schumer, saying on “State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash” that “Democrats are not going to vote” for the package — that if not passed by its Jan. 30 deadline would launch the country into a partial government shutdown.” (RELATED: ‘What’s Happening In Minnesota Is Appalling’: Schumer Vows Dems Won’t Support ‘Woefully Inadequate’ DHS Funding Bill)
“Well, we can’t vote to fund this lawless Department of Homeland Security,” the Connecticut Democrat told host Dana Bash after she had asked him to weigh in on Schumer’s remarks. “And, remember, it’s not just in Minnesota. They’re violating the law all over the country.”
Murphy then said he had spent the previous week in Texas where he claimed DHS agents were “locking up two-year-old and three-year-old kids who are here in the United States legally just for the purpose of traumatizing them.”
“This is a nationwide campaign of lawlessness. I swore an oath to the Constitution. So did every single United States senator. We cannot fund a Department of Homeland Security that is murdering American citizens, that is traumatizing little boys and girls all across the country, in violation of the law,” the senator told Bash.
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Murphy specified that Democrats “should only vote for a bill that puts constraints on this lawlessness, that reforms the way that they are endangering our citizens in our cities.”
In a similar vein, Schumer had described the funding package including the DHS bill, as currently constructed as “woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”
“So, yes, Democrats are not going to vote to fund this version of the Department of Homeland Security. But if we can get some serious reforms that saves and protects lives in our cities, then we will come to the table,” Murphy told Bash. “But this is something that I think the American people demand of us right now; 60, 70 percent of Americans don’t support what ICE is doing, and they don’t want Democrats or Republicans to fund this kind of lawlessness in our cities.”
In order to pass the six-bill funding package and avoid a partial government shutdown, Republicans, assuming no defections, need at least seven Democratic senators to vote in favor of it and break the upper chamber’s 60-vote filibuster by Jan. 30.
Schumer, in an X post late Sunday morning, appeared to reinforce the notion his party is likely to send the country to a partial shutdown, writing, “Senate Democrats are united in rejecting this DHS spending bill.”
Please take a minute to read this heartbreaking statement from Nurse Pretti’s family.
Should the government funding package include support for the Department of Homeland Security?After their son was killed in broad daylight, they are now forced to defend him against this administration’s lies.
It’s another reason why Senate Democrats are united in rejecting this DHS… https://t.co/Ghqe5VF84c
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 25, 2026
In the post, Schumer states Pretti “was killed in broad daylight” and accused the Trump administration of lying about the facts of the shooting which claimed the 37-year-old’s life.
Democratic Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the party’s top appropriator in the upper chamber, warned against her fellow Democrats pursing a government shutdown to protest DHS funding in a statement issued days before Pretti’s death.
ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a CR nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill.
My full statement on the DHS funding bill. pic.twitter.com/PKiqWhTUIU
— Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) January 20, 2026
“ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a CR [continuing resolution] nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill,” Murray wrote in her Jan. 20 statement. “The suggestion that a shutdown in this moment might curb the lawlessness of this administration is not rooted in reality: under a CR and in a shutdown, this administration can do everything they are already doing—but without any of the critical guardrails and constraints imposed by a full-year funding bill.”
“There is much more we must do to rein in DHS, which I will continue to press for. But the hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need,” the top Senate Democrat on the Appropriations Committee added. “If you believe that we should be putting more of our taxpayer dollars towards health care and that our immigration enforcement should be focused on actual criminals instead of tear-gassing American children, then we need to speak up again and again—and we must take our fight to the ballot box.”
During the record-breaking 43-day-long shutdown in fall 2025, Murphy voted with Schumer and the vast majority of Senate Democrats against reopening the government more than a dozen times. In November 2025, days before eight Senate Democrats came to a deal with Republicans to end the shutdown, Murphy warned his party’s “brand” would suffer “pretty substantial damage” if it stopped prolonging the standoff.
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