Much of the Department of Homeland Security is set to run out of money Saturday morning after negotiations stalled between the White House and congressional Democrats over new restrictions on federal immigration agents, and lawmakers left town without funding the department.
The shutdown beginning at 12:01 a.m. will impact about 13 percent of the federal civilian workforce, although most of the affected DHS employees are required to keep working even if they are not being paid.
Democrats demanded new restrictions on federal immigration agents in exchange for voting to fund DHS after Alex Pretti was killed last month in Minneapolis. But the shutdown will not halt Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection operations because Republicans in Congress sent those agencies tens of millions of dollars in extra funding last year.
Instead, the brunt of the impact will fall on other agencies within DHS, a sprawling department that includes the Transportation Security Administration, which provides airport security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard.
Unlike in the final hours before many previous funding deadlines, most lawmakers were not in Washington on Friday trying to negotiate a last-minute deal. The Senate adjourned Thursday for a week-long recess after Democrats blocked consideration of a bill that would have funded DHS through Sept. 30, and some lawmakers in both parties immediately flew to Germany to attend the Munich Security Conference.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) on Friday criticized Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) for adjourning the House rather than keeping lawmakers in Washington as negotiations continue.
“We’ve drawn a hard line in the sand on behalf of the American people, and we’re not going to allow the Congress to cross it,” Jeffries told reporters Friday. “ICE needs to be dramatically reformed. Period. Full stop.”
Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) have said their members will return to Washington if a deal is struck, and Johnson has told members not to go on government-funded trips over the break.
Democrats sent the White House a detailed proposal Saturday outlining their demands, including tighter rules on warrants, a ban on federal immigration agents wearing masks and a requirement that they wear body cameras. The White House responded with a counterproposal Wednesday night, which Democrats dismissed as unserious. Jeffries said Friday that he expected Democrats to send a response but did not provide a timeline.
“We’re talking, but we have to protect law enforcement,” President Donald Trump told reporters Friday. “I know what they want, I know what they can live with. The Democrats have gone crazy.”
Lawmakers have now funded all other federal agencies through Sept. 30, limiting the scope of this shutdown compared with the previous two.
During a government shutdown, all federal functions necessary for public safety, national security and protecting government property may continue, though employees work without pay. All other government employees are temporarily furloughed. The first missed pay period would be March 3.
DHS has not publicly released an updated plan for how the agency would continue to operate during a shutdown. But its last shutdown plan, released in late September, indicate that 91 percent of its employees would continue to work without pay.
“DHS essential missions and functions will continue as they do during every shutdown,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to The Washington Post. “However, during a shutdown, many employees will be forced to work without pay, putting strain on the frontline defenders of our nation.”
As they prepared to leave for the week Thursday, both parties blamed the other for the impending partial shutdown.
“Every iteration of this gets a step closer because I think the White House is giving more and more ground on some of these key issues, but so far they’re not getting any kind of response from Democrats,” Thune said. “I think if people are operating in good faith and actually want a solution, that deal space is there. I think this can get done.”
Schumer posted a video Friday showing federal immigration agents shoving people to the ground and pepper-spraying them. “This is why Democrats voted NO on more funding for ICE. And we will continue to do so until ICE is reined in and the violence ends,” he wrote on X.
Democrats have refused to pass an annual appropriations bill for DHS after federal immigration officials killed two U.S. citizens, Pretti and Renée Good, in Minneapolis during the largest immigration enforcement operation in the agency’s history. Democrats demanded new accountability measures for field agents, including requirements that agents wear body cameras and don’t wear masks, and that agents get judicial warrants before entering people’s homes.
Many Republicans have said they’re open to potential changes, but rejected calls for immigration officials to identify themselves, arguing that it could make them easier doxing targets. Others are furious that Democrats are forcing a shutdown over a policy they see as their marquee issue.
“The electrical cord that brought President Trump into office both times was the open-borders crowd and what they did to this country,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri). “The American people want deportations, and not just of the worst of the worst.”
More than 60 percent of people think the deployment of federal immigration agents in U.S. cities has gone too far, according to a poll conducted early this month by AP-NORC, and more than half of respondents said Trump has gone too far in his efforts to deport immigrants illegally living in the U.S.
Congress faced a similar situation late last year, when Republicans and Democrats deadlocked over expiring subsidies that lowered costs for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans. Without a deal in place to preserve them, Senate Democrats refused to back new spending bills, leading to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. That shutdown ended with a promise to vote on extending the subsidies, which failed.
DHS received $170 billion through the Republican tax law passed last year, including $75 billion for ICE alone — ensuring the agency could continue its controversial enforcement operations despite the funding lapse.
Immigration agents in Minnesota have repeatedly clashed with protesters and state and local officials since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge, which began in December, and have been filmed using aggressive tactics against U.S. citizens and undocumented people without criminal records.
Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, said Thursday that the agency would end its enforcement campaign in the Twin Cities. But multiple Democratic senators said that’s not enough to persuade them to back off of their demands.
“I’m a little bit of a show-me-the-money kind of gal right now, I’m going to see what’s going to actually happen,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) said Thursday. “But understand that I don’t think that has any bearing on the negotiations. The question of the negotiation is whether ICE is going to continue to use these illegal and dangerous tactics.”
Anna Liss-Roy contributed to this report.
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