Stalemate Over ICE Funding Bogs Down in Senate as Democrats Press for Reforms Over White House Objections

The leader of the Senate Democrats, Senator Chuck Schumer, is dodging questions about a potential short-term funding deal for the Department of Homeland Security, which is due to run out of money on Friday. His colleagues, meanwhile, are drawing a red line suggesting that ICE and Border Patrol should not be funded without serious reforms at the agencies. Mr. Schumer and the House minority leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, laid out a list of demands for the White House last week in exchange for their support. Their reform proposals include forcing deportation agents to identify themselves, requiring judicial warrants for searches, barring agents from entering schools and polling places, and requiring agents to wear body cameras and remove their masks. The White House, however, has refused to make any major concessions. Mr. Jeffries told reporters Tuesday morning that the Trump administration will not make changes to warrant requirements, will not force federal agents to conduct investigations alongside state and local officials, and will not create new use of force policies for immigration agents. “The so-called White House counter proposal is woefully inadequate. It is not a serious offer,” he told reporters. When asked by the New York Sun if he and House Democrats would support a short-term funding agreement known as a continuing resolution, Mr. Jeffries said he was a “hard no.”“ICE needs to be dramatically reformed,” the minority leader told the Sun. Mr. Schumer, however, made no such commitment on blocking a short-term extension. In the Senate, it takes 60 votes to advance spending legislation and proceed to final passage. “There’s no reason we can’t get this done by Thursday,” Mr. Schumer told reporters when asked about a continuing resolution to keep the Department of Homeland Security open for another two or three weeks. When pressed again if he could support such a compromise, he simply repeated his previous answer. Key Senate Democrats are not on board with Mr. Schumer’s position, however. Standing besides the minority leader at his press conference Tuesday, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada — who did not support her party’s shutdown stance last year — said she would under no circumstances vote for another continuing resolution for DHS. “Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues are refusing to work with us,” Ms. Cortez Masto, a former prosecutor who spent eight years serving as Nevada’s attorney general, told reporters. “I have been working with law enforcement my entire career … What we are asking [for] is not radical. We want federal law enforcement to be held to the same reasonable standards as state and local law enforcement.”The top Democrat on the subcommittee charged with writing the DHS budget, Senator Chris Murphy, said there is “an asymmetry of seriousness right now.”“They didn’t respond to our, you know, bill language. They didn’t propose alternative bill language. They gave us back talking points, and when you’re three days away from a shutdown, we can’t be trading talking points,” Mr. Murphy told reporters. “This is still a galvanizing issue for the entire country. I think the White House does know that they can’t be in a position of defending what ICE is doing.”Mr. Murphy says that, based on conversations with Democratic colleagues, he believes there is “a lot of enthusiasm” for a partial shutdown of the department if other essential services are funded, including air travel safety, emergency disaster response, and the Coast Guard. He floated the idea of funding those kinds of agencies while ICE and Border Patrol details are hammered out separately, though Republicans have rejected that proposal. Whatever comes out of the Senate, however, will face a significant uphill climb in the House, whether it be a short-term funding deal or a package containing reforms to ICE. One House member who voted for the last DHS continuing resolution last month, Congressman Jim Himes — who serves as the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee — told the Sun Tuesday that while he hates shutdowns, he is waiting to see what comes out of the Senate before he can make a final decision on a potential additional short-term funding extension, leaving the door open to potential opposition. Conservatives in the House, meanwhile, are already levying threats against their own leadership. Ahead of the last DHS shutdown in January, members of the House Freedom Caucus threatened to include their SAVE America Act — which would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a photo identification to cast a ballot — as an amendment to the bill. If that happened, Democrats would have universally opposed the legislation once it came to the Senate.

Stalemate Over ICE Funding Bogs Down in Senate as Democrats Press for Reforms Over White House Objections

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