WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would sign an executive order to pay all Department of Homeland Security employees as Congress moved forward with a plan to reopen most of the department and pursue additional funding. The Senate took the first step toward funding the bulk of DHS earlier Thursday.

"I will soon sign an order to pay ALL of the incredible employees at the Department of Homeland Security," Trump said. The president signed an executive order last week to pay Transportation Security Administration agents during the partial government shutdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, Customs and Border Protection employees, and active-duty Coast Guard members are also being paid.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune took to the floor to send the House a measure that Senate Democrats and Republicans had agreed to last week. The measure would fund all of DHS except for ICE and portions of CBP. Democrats have opposed funding the department's immigration enforcement operation since two deadly shootings by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this year, and negotiations over reforms to ICE stalled last week.

The House convened for a brief pro forma session Thursday and did not take action on the Senate bill, meaning the DHS shutdown will continue until at least Monday. Most lawmakers from both chambers are away on recess until the week of April 13. The House left for recess one day after the Senate left, without establishing a bicameral path to fund the department.

House Speaker Mike Johnson opted to set aside the Senate plan and instead put forward a temporary measure to fund all of DHS. On Wednesday, Trump demanded that lawmakers fund ICE and Border Patrol through the reconciliation process, which allows Republicans to move forward with a bill without support from Senate Democrats.

Thune and Johnson said they would pursue funding for immigration enforcement agencies for three years through reconciliation and would work to approve other DHS funding in the coming days.

Thune told reporters Thursday that he did not know the House's plan for passing the DHS funding bill but assumed the House would at some point move it with the understanding that a reconciliation bill would follow. "There are just limited options. The thing that some people want to do, we can't do," Thune said.

"There were a number of conversations around it, but I think eventually people started homing in on that this is going to be a path forward that at least is a viable one," he added.

After the bulk of DHS is funded, Republicans plan to turn their attention to reconciliation, with a deadline to get the bill on the president's desk by June 1. Republicans plan to focus the reconciliation bill on funding ICE and CBP rather than including other priorities such as the SAVE America Act or an Iran supplemental. Thune acknowledged that there will likely be attempts to add to the package. "And that maximizes, I think, the speed at which we can do it and the support for it," he said, adding that the goal was to "hop on it right away."