Less than 24 hours after President Trump threw cold water on their efforts to cut a deal with Democrats to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, Senate Republicans were intensifying their bid on Tuesday to find an offramp to the impasse amid staggeringly long lines at airports across the country.
Under a plan they discussed on Monday night with Mr. Trump at the White House, Republicans would put forth a bill to fund all of the department except for parts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement involved in the administration’s deportation crackdown, according to multiple people familiar with the discussion. It was not clear what, if any, enforcement limits would be included in such a plan, or if Democrats, who have insisted on reining in federal immigration agents’ tactics, would go along with it if it omitted such restrictions.
A spokesman for Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said he had made it clear to his members and to Republicans that only removing the ICE enforcement money without any other changes would not be enough to earn the support of his members.
The proposal has not changed since the weekend, when Mr. Trump publicly rejected any spending deal and said he would not accept one unless the Senate delivered him the strict voter ID bill, paired with restrictions on transgender athletes and children, that the chamber is now considering.
But several Republican senators closely aligned with Mr. Trump told him on Monday that they would work on a separate bill to address those issues and ICE funding, which they would seek to push through without Democratic support using a special process called budget reconciliation that is not subject to a filibuster, according to two of the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the negotiations. (Because Republicans gave ICE a vast windfall as part of Mr. Trump’s sweeping domestic policy law last year, the agency has continued to operate during the shutdown.)
After the meeting, Senate Republicans sounded sanguine about the prospects of a deal. Asked by reporters if they had a solution to the weekslong standoff, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, one of those who met with Mr. Trump, said, “we do.”
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, which oversees spending bills, said that she had grown “more optimistic that by the end of the week we will fund the Department of Homeland Security.”
Lawmakers cautioned that conversations were continuing, and the plan under discussion would face significant hurdles. But it had the potential to end a stalemate that has dragged on for nearly a month and which has led to chaos at American airports, giving senators an escape hatch ahead of a scheduled two-week recess.
To overcome the 60-vote threshold required to advance most legislation, the funding bill would require some Democratic buy-in. So far, Democrats have been resolutely opposed to legislation that does not contain new guardrails on immigration enforcement efforts, a demand that hardened after federal agents killed two American citizens in Minneapolis in January.
Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats and was part of bipartisan talks last week, said on Monday that he needed to see the legislative text and how ICE’s detention and deportation operations were carved out of it.
“I want to see exactly what that means and how it’s — what the language is,” he said. “And there may be some negotiation on exactly how to define that, but I’m just waiting. As I say, the first step is to see the actual deal.”
Any separate ICE bill passed under reconciliation would also require near-unanimous Republican support, and lawmakers in both the House and Senate have been skeptical that the party could unite behind legislation, particularly in an election year.
And that legislation would have to fit within the strict rules tied to the reconciliation process, which can only be used to pass provisions that make direct changes to government spending or revenues. It was not clear how the voter ID legislation, which would also require proof of citizenship when registering to vote, or limits on transgender people could qualify.
The House Freedom Caucus, an ultraconservative group, warned that the Senate plan was unlikely to succeed in pushing through Mr. Trump’s election measures, which he has called a top priority.
“This is gaslighting,” the caucus said in a social media post on Tuesday. “The American people are not stupid and will not accept more failure theater from Republicans in Congress.”
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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