Senate Democrats on Wednesday demanded that federal agents carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown take off their masks and stop warrantless searches and arrests, laying out a list of conditions they said must be attached to a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security ahead of a Friday shutdown deadline.
In the aftermath of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, presented Republicans with a specific proposal that Democrats said they would insist on in exchange for their votes.
In addition to a prohibition on federal officers wearing masks, they also demanded that the agents wear body cameras and carry identification. Their proposal would put an end to roving patrols and require warrants issued by a judge for arrests and searches.
Democrats also want the federal agents to be subject to the same use-of-force policies that apply to local and state law enforcement agencies, which require those involved in violent incidents to be subject to independent investigations if they are accused of wrongdoing.
“No more anonymous agents, no more secret operatives,” Mr. Schumer said after a closed-door meeting in which Senate Democrats hashed out their demands before making them public. “These are common sense reforms, ones that Americans know and expect from law enforcement. If Republicans refuse to support them, they are choosing chaos over order.”
He laid out the demands the day before the Senate was scheduled on Thursday to take its first procedural vote on a spending package that includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security, as well as for the Pentagon, State Department and Treasury. If Republicans cannot muster 60 votes to advance the legislation — which would require the support of at least seven Democrats — it will stall, with little more than 24 hours to go before the shutdown deadline.
Mr. Schumer urged Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, to separate the measure funding the Department of Homeland Security from a six-bill spending package for much of the rest of the government to allow lawmakers time to rework it before the deadline. He pledged that Democrats would support the other five bills, which also include money for health, education, labor and transportation programs, and keep much of the government operating while an agreement is worked out on immigration enforcement policy.
Mr. Thune has so far resisted that approach, even though many Republicans have begun to express unease about Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown and some have expressed a willingness to break off the homeland funding from the underlying bill.
Citing the difficulty of rapidly moving new legislation, Republicans have instead urged Democrats to reach an agreement with the White House on new policies rather than try to put them into law. Democrats have balked at that idea, saying they do not trust the Trump administration to follow through once the funding has been approved.
Mr. Thune reiterated on Wednesday that his preference would be to keep the broader spending package unchanged.
“If the bill changes much from what the House already passed, then you’ve got another steep hill to climb over there,” he told reporters, acknowledging “the narrow margins in the House and the Senate.”
The concern among Republican leaders is that conservatives in the House will balk at accepting any new restrictions that Democrats add to the homeland security measure. Minutes after Mr. Schumer announced Democrats’ demands, Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, took to social media to declare, “I have my own list if DHS is opened back up.”
“Beginning with no sanctuary city funding,” Mr. Roy said.
White House officials on Wednesday invited a handful of Senate Democrats to meet with staff aides to discuss a path forward on the bill to fund homeland security, according to an official familiar with the invitation.
Those Democrats, who broke with their party in November and voted with Republicans to reopen the government, declined the offer. Many of them have already said they are standing with the rest of their party in refusing to back the homeland security spending measure without substantial new curbs on the agency.
“The White House has had no specific, good, concrete ideas,” Mr. Schumer told reporters at the news conference.
At the White House, a senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks, said the Democrats had been invited for a listening session so that Mr. Trump’s team could better understand their position. The official said the president hoped to avoid another government shutdown and accused Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill of blocking the meeting.
The spending measure scheduled for a test vote on Thursday includes six spending bills that Democrats and Republicans negotiated, and that the House already approved. Senate Democrats were ready to allow the package to pass before the fatal shooting on Saturday of Alex Pretti, but they quickly changed course afterward and called on Republicans to strip out the homeland security funding until they could agree on new immigration enforcement restrictions.
Top Republicans have refrained from taking a hard line against the Democratic push for more limits on the immigration operations in the hopes of finding a resolution that would avoid another shutdown just months after the longest one on record. That approach shows a recognition, reflected in new polls, that ICE’s aggressive tactics are increasingly unpopular with the public.
But strong rank-and-file Republican opposition to the Democratic plan began to emerge on Wednesday. Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri, said the Democratic plan for banning masks and requiring identification amounted to forcing agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to “dox themselves so their families can be harassed and threatened in their homes.”
“They demand we cripple law enforcement’s ability to enforce immigration laws,” Mr. Schmitt said of the Democrats. “This is not about oversight. It’s about paralysis and the objective is mass amnesty.”
The new rules proposed by the Democrats are aimed at addressing many of the complaints raised by officials in the cities and states they represent. The Democrats are asking that federal officials coordinate more closely with state and local law enforcement, rather than roaming communities and making random stops based on the suspicion that someone might be an undocumented immigrant.
“No more — no more of an out-of-control, militarized ICE roaming the streets of communities across the country,” Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said. “No more beating and detaining Latinos simply for the color of our skin and because we occasionally choose to speak Spanish.”
Republicans noted that the Department of Homeland Security funding legislation already included $20 million for body cameras for federal immigration officers as well as requirements for more training on de-escalating confrontations. But Democrats said the restrictions included in the bill, which was negotiated before the shootings in Minnesota, did not go far enough and that the killings represented a turning point, requiring a much stronger response.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
The post Democrats Demand Unmasked Agents, New Limits to Fund D.H.S. appeared first on New York Times.
