WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans held a late-night series of votes under budget reconciliation to advance funding for immigration enforcement agencies, with senators completing amendment voting just past 3:30 a.m. before leaving the chamber. Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana took the floor before the series began to press for additional debate time on his amendments to the budget resolution.

"Frankly I am worried about the health of some of our members," Kennedy said as 9 p.m. approached. "Not that they're in bad health, but it's hard to stay up all night."

The reconciliation process, which allows the Senate majority to bypass the filibuster and pass budget-related bills along party lines, includes an open-ended series of votes known as vote-a-rama. Republican leaders are using the procedure to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol after Democrats blocked money for the agencies following the shootings of two protesters in Minneapolis.

Majority Leader John Thune passed the spending bill by voice vote just past 2 a.m. Senators then flew home for a two-week recess, leaving final passage to the House. A new plan for reopening the Department of Homeland Security remained unresolved, after Senate Republicans struck a deal with Democrats in late March to reopen most of the department, including the Transportation Security Administration.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said of the late nights: "It's insane." During the late-night session, she walked between the chamber and her hideaway office in the Capitol building, as her smartwatch indicated that her bedtime was approaching. "My mom always said, 'Nothing good happens after midnight,'" she added.

Congressional leaders in both major parties sometimes hold overnight sessions to exhaust members, overcome objections and push legislation to passage. Last year, Congress held nearly back-to-back all-night sessions to pass President Donald Trump's package of spending and tax cuts, which he called One Big Beautiful Bill, by his July 4 deadline. The Affordable Care Act passed the Senate in the early hours of Christmas Eve 2009 after weeks of negotiations.

Sen. Ron Wyden reflected on the pattern during the proceedings. "Part of what's changed here is there's a lot of heavy lifting that you have to do to get a bill passed," he said. "I think at some point you've got to have a forcing mechanism, and one of the easiest is to stay up until the wee hours so that everybody is basically trying not to fall asleep on national TV."