Democrats are refusing to provide votes for a newly brokered deal to fund the partially shut down Department of Homeland Security over lack of ICE reforms — even though the agency is left out of the funding deal.
The plan, negotiated by a group of Senate Republicans in the Oval Office on Monday, will fund 94% of DHS immediately and would address Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) later in a reconciliation bill, Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday. Democrats are wary of the brewing deal to fund every other portion of the department, with many members of the party claiming they will only support it if they secure their long-demanded reforms to the lone agency excluded from the funding bill.
The deal sent to Senate Democrats Tuesday morning would not fund ICE removal operations (ERO) but would fund Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This would give Democrats more time to negotiate reforms surrounding ICE and use-of-force policies — one of their biggest reform asks within the agency — during the month-long budget reconciliation process.
The funding proposal also includes other Democratic-backed reforms, including additional funding for body cameras.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats sent their counterproposal to Republicans on Wednesday and said that same afternoon it “contains some of the very same asks Democrats have been talking about for months now” and would “rein in ICE with commonsense guardrails.” The offer was delivered to the caucus following a meeting between Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who told reporters the two are on the same page.
However, Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said Wednesday the counteroffer was “not real” and contained nine new demands for DHS funding. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Democrats are “asking for things that have already been turned down.”
“So, it seems like we are going in circles,” Thune told reporters the same day.
All other crucial DHS agencies that have operated without government funding for 40 days — the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — would be fully funded under the Republicans’ proposed plan.
The partial government shutdown is currently three days shy of breaking the record for the longest shutdown in history, and security lines in airports across the nation are spilling through concourses and out into parking lots.
“Democrats are continuing to push for modest reforms and just as Democrats have been very clear we will immediately fund TSA, FEMA, Coast Guard and CISA while talks continue on border patrol, it was also made very clear that if we are talking about funding any part of ICE or CBP, we absolutely must take some key steps to rein them in,” Schumer said Tuesday. “The current Republican offer does not do that.”
Democrats have been actively excluding both ICE and CBP in their numerous attempts to fund parts of the DHS, proving to be another roadblock for the caucus in supporting the funding deal.
Newly-confirmed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin also committed to upholding the law requiring judicial warrants be obtained before entering private property and protecting sensitive locations such as polling sites, hospitals and schools. Democrats, however, want to see Mullin’s commitments in legislative text.
Democrats also claim that the proposal lacks guardrails preventing money from being transferred from one agency to the other.
“We agree to all these funding levels. Let’s fund everything and let’s just continue the ICE reform discussion, knowing that ICE is pre-funded so nobody is losing a paycheck,” Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine told reporters Tuesday. He added that upon seeing the proposal, Democrats felt wary of the deal.
“It looked like ‘fund part of ICE and not the other.’ The problem is, if you fund part and not the other, they can flow money from one to the other. They can take money from the pre-funding in the [One, Big] Beautiful Bill and pour it into the appropriations,” he said.
The renewed debate over DHS funding comes as acting TSA Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified in front of House lawmakers Wednesday that some airports are seeing 40-50% of TSA screeners calling out sick “because they simply cannot afford to report to work.”
President Donald Trump, who has yet to endorse the DHS funding proposal, deployed ICE agents to airports across the country as unpaid TSA agents struggle with absences. He also announced Wednesday morning he “might call up the National Guard for more help.”
Republican Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, a key negotiator in DHS talks, attended a meeting with Democratic Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey on Wednesday, telling reporters after the meeting lawmakers “have to” reach a deal before Easter recess next week.
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