WASHINGTON _ A night of political brinkmanship ended late Friday when the House and Senate approved a one-week temporary spending bill to avert the partial shutdown at midnight of the Department of Homeland Security.

Lawmakers in the House voted 357 to 60 to approve the one-week measure hours after an earlier effort led by the Republican leadership to finance the agency for three weeks suffered a stunning 203-224 defeat, with 52 Republicans joining Democrats to scuttle it.

The loss, a major embarrassment for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, left the Republican-led chamber little choice but to accept the one-week measure or face questions about the GOP’s ability to run Congress and get things done.

The Senate, which earlier in the day passed a bill to fund DHS through September, approved a similar one-week measure to ensure the agency would remain fully open for the time being.

House Democrats provided 174 votes for the one-week bill after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to her caucus urging them to support it.

“We are asking you once again to help advance passage of the Senate passed, long-term funding of DHS by voting in favor of a 7-day patch that will be on suspension in the House tonight,” Pelosi wrote. “Your vote tonight will assure that we will vote for full funding next week.”

However, a Boehner spokesman Friday night denied that a deal has been reached.

If Congress had failed to approve the funding by midnight Friday, roughly 30,000 employees would have been furloughed from a department that includes the Border Patrol, Secret Service, Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The bulk of DHS’s agencies would continue to operate through a shutdown with workers who wouldn’t receive paychecks until the congressional stalemate ended.

The underlying issue behind the standoff was President Barack Obama’s executive actions late last year on immigration. The Senate passed a DHS funding bill last month sent over from the House, but stripped its provisions that would curtail Obama’s immigration actions. His executive order would shield more than 4 million immigrants from deportation.

Earlier in the day, following the House’s defeat of the three-week spending reprieve, Obama administration officials blasted Republican efforts to attack his immigration actions through DHS. But White House press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama was prepared to sign a short-term measure rather than risk a shutdown.

“If the president is faced with a choice of having the Department of Homeland Security shut down or fund that department for a short term, the president is not going to allow the agency to shut down,” Earnest said.

Boehner was caught once again unsuccessfully trying to unite a House Republicans caucus riven by a deep ideological divide. Now his own political perch could become precarious.

To appease angry members of his caucus who wanted to hold DHS funding hostage over Obama’s immigration order, Boehner had pushed a short-term funding bill to avoid a partial shutdown of the agency and prompt negotiations with the Senate to resolve differences between the two bills.

But a strange alliance formed in the fractious House chamber between conservative Republicans and Democrats who support the so-called “clean” funding bill passed by the Senate.

“Our leadership set the stage for this,” said Rep. John Fleming, R-La. “They said we would fight tooth and nail with the (continuing resolution) on DHS. And yet we didn’t see much messaging, coordination or communication with outside groups to try to get the American people on board with this. Finally, at the last hour, we get, ‘Give us three weeks and we’ll try to fire the base up and get something going.’ What have we been doing the last eight weeks? We’re not seeing the ‘tooth and nail’ now, that’s for sure.”

Senate Democrats said Boehner’s plan was doomed to fail because they wouldn’t agree to a House-Senate conference to reconcile the bills. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote Monday on setting up a House-Senate conference committee to bridge the divide between the two chambers over the issue. Democrats are expected to block the proposal.

“We will not go to conference on some jury-rigged situation they send back€¦for whatever reason,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

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(Renee Schoof and Danielle Ohl contributed to this article.)

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