The Department of Homeland Security has faced a funding shortfall for more than 40 days as Congress fights over federal immigration enforcement. While lawmakers came closer to ending this partial government shutdown on Friday, a resolution to the underlying issues remains elusive.
The Senate voted to fund DHS early Friday, though it excluded Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. House Republicans rejected that legislation and instead want to pursue a bill that would fund the entire department for two months.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) warned that the House plan “is dead on arrival in the Senate,” which means the partial shutdown will continue. For all their grandstanding, neither the House nor the Senate has been able to pass in its own chamber a bill to reform ICE and the Border Patrol.
After the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, it became clear that President Donald Trump had overreached in his deportation campaign. Democrats had the leverage to ask for some necessary reforms as Americans’ views on federal immigration enforcement agencies soured.
Republicans conceded on some helpful oversight measures, like requiring agents to wear body cameras and identification. They also agreed to limiting enforcement in schools and hospitals. But Democrats have refused to budge from their original list of demands.
The irony is that while Congress failed to strike a compromise, ICE and the Border Patrol remained funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Meanwhile, Americans dealt with the fallout of leaving the rest of DHS unfunded. Unpaid Transportation Security Administration agents have been failing to show up for work, leaving millions of Americans to endure lengthy waits at the airport. Other security programs have gone unfunded as the administration wages war in Iran.
Many Democrats are betting that the chaos will work against the party in power, and they can run on fighting to defund ICE. The political logic is sound, but Democrats may come to regret the tactic. It’s not hard to imagine Republicans refusing to fund agencies better aligned with Democratic priorities.
Meanwhile, Trump stepped into the governing void with a legally questionable emergency order to fund the TSA. He has turbocharged the trend of concentrating more power in the executive branch, and a feckless Congress only makes it easier.
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