White House calls on Congress to return to ​​Washington from Spring Break to fund DHS

President Donald Trump wants Congress to cancel the rest of its two-week recess and return to Washington, D.C., to pass a funding deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday.

Leavitt said during a press briefing that the president is “encouraging” lawmakers to “come back to Washington to permanently fix this problem and to fund and reopen the Department of Homeland Security entirely.”

The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for 45 days, officially becoming the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The previous longest shutdown was 43 days, which occurred last year.

But congressional lawmakers broke for their scheduled two-week recess to observe Passover and Easter on Friday after House Republicans rejected a Senate-passed deal that funded most of DHS, but carved out funding for immigration enforcement operations.

House Republicans passed a 60-day funding patch that funded the entire department,