House Republicans on Friday angrily rejected a Senate-passed deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, threatening to extend the agency shutdown that has crippled airports in a fit of outrage over the agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis.
After quickly assessing the compromise that passed the Senate early Friday, conservative House Republicans tore into it in harsh terms. They derided it for hewing too closely to the Democratic position by omitting money for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“House Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “This gambit that was done last night is a joke.”
Calling the Senate-passed deal engineered by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, “ridiculousness,” Mr. Johnson said the House would instead take up a stopgap measure to fund the entire department until late May.
That dimmed the prospects of a quick end to the partial shutdown. Such a bill would be dead on arrival in the Senate, where Democrats have been rejecting similar proposals for more than a month. Any change the House makes would require senators, who have now scattered to their states for a two-week break, to return to Washington and vote again.
Senate Democrats have insisted for weeks that they would not support new funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless the Trump administration agreed to significant restrictions on ICE tactics and officer conduct after federal immigration agents fatally shot two American citizens in Minneapolis in January. Despite Mr. Trump’s initial commitment to negotiate over such limits, the White House and Republicans in Congress resisted any changes. The prolonged stalemate has in recent days led to long lines and chaos at some airport screening points on the eve of spring break as Transportation Security Administration officers went unpaid and began calling off the job.
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.
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