It’s the last day of the DHS funding deadline, and still there’s no deal in sight. The latest attempt failed in the Senate on Thursday, February 12, almost perfectly along party lines, and now lawmakers are heading off for a recess. A partial shutdown is practically guaranteed, but there’s a special irony in the refusal of Democrats to meet the Republicans in the middle: ICE and CBP, the two agencies they’re actually protesting, will continue to operate unfettered as the rest of DHS enters shutdown mode – unfettered and unreformed by any possible concessions that might have come from the deal.
Offers and Counteroffers
Democrats issued a ten-point list of ICE and CBP reform demands last week and, over the weekend, drew up legislation to fulfill that list. On Wednesday, the White House sent over a counteroffer. Though no one is yet revealing much in the way of details, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called the offer “insufficient and incomplete.”
Still, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) called a vote for a full-year funding bill. It flopped, as expected, and even Thune voted against it as a procedural trick to allow him to bring it back to the floor again. In a 52-47 vote, all but one Democrat – Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman – opposed the bill. Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell (R) didn't vote.
President Trump told reporters after the vote that some of the demands from Democrats are “very, very hard to approve.” Prior to the vote, Sen. Thune told the press he thought the White House’s offer was “pretty close” to the “agreement zone.” But he changed his tune by the afternoon. “I just think at the moment we’re not close,” Thune told reporters post-vote as members of Congress began to leave town for a recess until Monday, February 23 – though he also said lawmakers were on notice that they’d have to return if a deal is made.
A Most Ironic Shutdown
Democrats in Congress claim they won’t approve any funding at all for DHS until ICE and CBP undergo significant reform – as detailed in their ten-point list. They cite outrage at the aggressive tactics on display in Minnesota and the shooting of two US citizens by immigration agents.
Their line-in-the-sand-style refusal to accept anything but full acquiescence might, at first look, seem valiant to many Americans – even some who aren’t Democrats. But one must look at the practical effect. It is now a well-reported fact that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last year, gave ICE and CBP plenty of funding to operate for the next several years. It is, instead, the other agencies and offices of DHS that will see disruption.
And even that won’t necessarily be immediate across the board. USCIS Director Joseph Edlow explained to House lawmakers that his agency is funded primarily through application and form fees, so his folks will continue to draw pay. FEMA, on the other hand, could see employees working without pay by March, according to Associate Administrator Gregg Phillips on Wednesday. As for the disaster fund itself, he told Congress it had “sufficient balances to continue emergency response activities for the foreseeable future.”
Many agencies and offices may furlough workers or require them to work without pay. Expect Secret Service and Coast Guard personnel to soldier on whether a paycheck comes or not, and for the TSA, among others, to furlough thousands.
In an especially ironic twist, the Office of Detention Oversight – which investigates immigration detention conditions and deaths – might close, as it did in the 43-day shutdown last fall.
Even if the latest offer was “insufficient and incomplete,” it would have meant some progress toward their goal (that is, if reform is truly what Democrat lawmakers are after). Instead, they voted to shutter the non-immigration-related parts of DHS while the agencies they appear so outraged over continue to operate with no reform – and potentially with even fewer safeguards than there would otherwise be.
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