WASHINGTON – Republicans in Congress are forging ahead with a risky go-it-alone strategy for fully funding the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down for almost two months as Democrats demand changes to President Donald Trump’s broad campaign of immigration enforcement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday that Republicans will try to pass the money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection “ the hard way.” That means bypassing Democrats, who say a funding bill should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants.
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Democrats will now get “none of that,” Thune said, after bipartisan negotiations stalled. Republicans are instead preparing a partisan bill that they will try to pass under a complicated, time-consuming maneuver called budget reconciliation that only requires a simple majority vote in the 53-47 Senate.
The process could be messy. Thune, R-S.D., is pushing for a narrow bill that would only include money for ICE and CBP in an effort to reopen the department quickly. But some of his Republican colleagues are likely to push to add other unrelated priorities.
Democrats say they will continue to insist on reforms to the agencies.
“Americans want ICE and Border Patrol reined in,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said.
Thune hopes for a ‘narrow’ bill
Thune and GOP leaders have said they want to speed the legislation through Congress with only the Homeland Security funding so that the department can reopen as quickly as possible.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., discussed that strategy with Trump at a White House meeting Friday. Barrasso posted afterward that “President Trump set a deadline of June 1 to get to his desk a focused reconciliation bill that funds ICE and Border Patrol.”
Trump appeared to be on board, posting on his social media site that “we are moving FAST and FOCUSED in keeping our Border SECURE!”
But it won’t be easy to keep senators — or the House — from trying to add other items to the bill.
Trump has been pushing his strict proof-of-citizenship bill, the SAVE Act, and the White House could soon request billions of dollars for the Iran war. Farm-state senators have been hoping to move a wide-ranging farm bill to boost the agricultural economy. And some Republicans say they should cut other programs to pay for the legislation, which could cost around $75 billion.
Republican leaders say they would do a second partisan budget reconciliation bill to deal with some of those issues. But many in the conference are skeptical that could happen this year, especially with thin GOP margins in both chambers and an election approaching.
“We’re looking at the narrow vision,” said GOP Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota after Republicans held a lunch meeting about the bill Tuesday. “Now, do people have other ideas? Of course.”
Lengthy DHS shutdown has no clear end
The Homeland Security Department has been shut down since mid-February.
After federal agents shot two protesters in Minneapolis in January, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law as the two sides negotiated. But the DHS funding lapsed with no agreement on changes to his administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.
In March, the Senate passed legislation by voice vote that would separate out ICE and Customs and Border Protection and fund the rest of the department, including the Transportation Security Administration as security lines grew long at some airports. But Republicans in the House refused to vote for it, saying they wouldn’t support any bill that didn’t include money for immigration enforcement.
Congress then left town for a two-week recess, leaving the issue unresolved. Trump has used executive orders to pay some department salaries in the meantime, but that is not a permanent solution.
During the recess, Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that they would pursue a two-track approach — pass the Senate bill that includes most of the department's funding through regular order and use the party-line bill to pass ICE and CBP funding. But it remains unclear if Johnson will be able to persuade his members to go along with that approach.
After returning to Washington this week, Thune said Republicans will try to use the budget bill to fund the agencies for three years, circumventing annual spending bills in an effort to prevent another shutdown during Trump’s term.
The agencies would be funded “not only today but well into the future,” Thune said.