The House of Representatives and the Senate are in session this week. Government funding expired last Friday, despite the Senate passing a FY26 funding package that would provide full-year funding for the Defense, Financial Services, Labor-HHS-Education, National Security-State, and Transportation-HUD spending bills, along with a two-week stopgap measure that funds the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 13. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) now must navigate ever-narrowing margins in the house—218 Republicans and 215 Democrats—to pass the amended package. However, Johnson will have to rely on his Republican colleagues for passage after Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said he wouldn’t direct his leadership team to secure support from Democrats to expedite passage of the legislation due to objections over new funding for ICE agents without guaranteed immigration enforcement reforms. It’s expected that a handful of moderate Democrats will ultimately vote in favor of the package, averting a lengthy government shutdown.

 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in consultation with the Department of Labor (DOL), published its final temporary rule, “Exercise of Time-Limited Authority to Increase the Fiscal Year 2026 Numerical Limitation for the H-2B Temporary Nonagricultural Worker Program.” The rule authorizes DHS and DOL to release 64,716 supplemental H-2B visas—the maximum number of supplemental visas authorized by Congress. The original 35,000 supplemental H-2B visas announced by the agencies at the beginning of January marked a 50% reduction from visas released in recent years. This final rule is effective from Jan. 30, 2026, through Sept. 30, 2026.

 

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Trump administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan and Haitian immigrants violated the Immigration and Nationality Act. The federal judges found that the TPS statute doesn’t allow for the Secretary of Homeland Security to unilaterally vacate protections. While the Supreme Court upheld Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of TPS for Venezuelans in October despite pending litigation, there is still an active TPS designation for Haitians until Feb. 3. A federal judge is expected to issue a ruling at the beginning of this week on whether to pause the termination of TPS for Haiti, which could delay the expiration date for TPS benefits.