Lawmakers remain at odds over funding the Department of Homeland Security, despite President Donald Trump’s move to fire Secretary Kristi L. Noem on Thursday.
Democrats cheered her departure but said it wasn’t enough to end the DHS shutdown that will soon enter its fourth week.
“This is a problem of policy, not personnel,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) told reporters Thursday. “The rot is deep. No one person can straighten this up until the president changes the whole agency, stops the violence, and reins in [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said Noem’s firing “is not sufficient.”
“We need a change in policy, and that has to be bold, dramatic, transformational and meaningful,” he said.
Democrats have demanded that Republicans agree to new accountability measures for federal immigration agents after the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, such as holding federal immigration officials to a code of conduct similar to state and local law enforcement that is enforced through independent investigations.
Republicans have said they’re open to changes but have dismissed some of Democrats’ key demands, including a requirement that agents identify themselves and seek judicial warrants for raids. Congressional Democrats have swapped offers with the White House, but an agreement remains elusive.
Noem’s chosen replacement, former House member and now-Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), is a known quantity to both chambers. But many Democrats said this doesn’t change their calculation.
“This changes nothing,” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey). “We are in a shutdown right now, because we have a rogue and reckless organization that is breaking into Americans homes, jumping out of unmarked cars, masked, literally slamming Americans to a pavement, or worse, as we’ve seen the two cases, murdering people.”
Republicans argued that Democrats aren’t trying to find a compromise. Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama), chair of the appropriations subcommittee for DHS, said Democrats had “a conversation with a Republican in a meaningful way about this since we did a two-week” funding extension at the end of January.
“The White House and Republicans have been willing to codify reforms and changes that Democrats have asked for but right now it’s never enough,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota). “And I think the reason it’s never enough is because they just really don’t want a deal.”
But Schumer said Republicans have been “stonewalling” Democrats, too, who argue that the White House won’t move on key policy demands.
That impasse was underscored Thursday when both parties sought to reopen DHS with dueling proposals, neither of which will result in the agency reopening in the near term.
Republicans offered measures in the House and Senate to fully fund the agency — including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, as well as other subagencies like the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard.
The Senate killed an effort to advance it 51-45 (60 votes were needed to overcome the filibuster).
Democrats in both chambers also attempted to advance their own counterproposals this week to fund TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard and DHS’s other agencies except ICE, CBP and Noem’s office. Both were blocked.
“These are the agencies that are part of what we ought to be funding and we can fund today if the Republicans wanted to do it, and you know what, my friends, they do not want to do it. Because they support lawless and reckless agencies: ICE and Customs and Border [Protection],” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said on the House floor Wednesday.
Theodoric Meyer, Paul Kane and Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.
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