Bipartisan Senate talks aimed at reining in President Trump’s immigration crackdown appeared to sputter on Thursday before they had even started, raising the risk of a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security in a little over a week.
Senators left Washington for the weekend without opening serious talks on a measure needed to keep the department running past a Feb. 13 midnight deadline, with Democrats demanding major changes to immigration enforcement operations and Republicans digging in against measures to curb the Trump administration’s deportation drive.
Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, the Republican chairwoman of the panel that oversees homeland security spending, said that she had made overtures to meet with Democrats that had so far gone unacknowledged.
“Obviously, we can’t find a pathway forward if we don’t have a conversation,” said Ms. Britt, who released a scathing statement on Wednesday night rejecting as “ridiculous” the proposals that Democrats have put forth for guardrails on federal immigration agents.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said Republicans had already shown they were not willing to negotiate by publicly dismissing his party’s demands.
“Nothing will get done until we know what the Republicans are for, OK?” he said. “They have to get their act together.”
At the White House, officials sidestepped questions about what specific changes Mr. Trump would accept, though his spokeswoman said he was open to considering some.
Democratic leaders “sent over a very long list of demands, some of which the administration is willing to discuss,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters at a briefing. “Others don’t seem like they are grounded in any common sense, and they are nonstarters for this administration.”
The ongoing standoff raised questions about whether lawmakers could strike a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security before a stopgap spending bill lapses on Feb. 14. If no deal is reached and passed by both chambers by then, the department and the agencies it oversees will shut down.
In a sign of waning hope that an agreement could be reached in time, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, suggested that he would be ready to put forth another stopgap spending bill as soon as Monday if there continued to be no progress in the negotiations.
“If they refuse to sit down and actually come to the table and negotiate, we’ll need one,” Mr. Thune said.
But a temporary spending bill would require the support of at least seven Democrats to move forward. In the aftermath of the killing of two American citizens in Minnesota by federal immigration officers, the party’s leaders have said that they remain unified against any more money for the Department of Homeland Security unless it is tied to new restrictions on agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the United States Border Patrol.
“If Republicans can’t go along with that, they shouldn’t count on our votes,” Mr. Schumer said.
Mr. Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, sent a letter to top Republicans on Wednesday night in which they formally laid out their demands.
They included requests that Republicans have already rejected outright, including barring federal immigration agents from wearing masks, requiring them to display identification and requiring them to obtain warrants from judges before entering private property to make arrests.
Democrats are also pushing to codify a “reasonable use of force policy,” and for better federal coordination with state and local law enforcement agencies. They also want an end to racial profiling by federal immigration officers, stronger legal safeguards around detention facilities and the prohibition of immigration raids at “sensitive locations” like hospitals, churches and schools.
Republicans have countered that Democrats’ requests are too numerous and that they would overly constrain federal immigration efforts that their party broadly supports. Ms. Britt referred to the proposal as a “ridiculous Christmas list.”
No deal to impose restrictions can move forward without the backing of Mr. Trump, who struck a deal with Mr. Schumer last week to avoid a partial shutdown that included a commitment to negotiate over Democrats’ demands for changes to immigration enforcement. The president’s support has been crucial to moving thorny legislation through the Republican-controlled House, where Speaker Mike Johnson is down to a bare-minimum majority.
“Ultimately, this will be a conversation between the White House and Chuck Schumer — and I guess, you know, the House as well,” Ms. Britt said, adding: “We are trying to figure out where we can work through some things.”
Since the shootings in Minnesota last month that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Mr. Trump has signaled some openness to a shift in tactics. But he has equivocated on what such changes he would support, speaking only in vague terms, and his aggressive rhetoric around immigration has not changed.
“I learned that maybe we could use a little bit of a softer touch,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with NBC on Wednesday. “But you still have to be tough.”
It may be more difficult still for Republicans and Democrats to reach a consensus as the politics around immigration continue to shift. In the nearly two weeks since the shooting of Mr. Pretti, polls have shown that a small but growing bloc of Republicans disapproves of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. But a vast majority of Republicans still support the crackdown, which may encourage G.O.P. lawmakers to harden their positions.
If no deal can be reached before the deadline, the lapse in funding will affect the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration, which would continue operating but whose employees would have to go without pay. Some Democrats have suggested funding those agencies separately while they continue to negotiate around ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
But failing to fund federal immigration enforcement operations would be unlikely to stop them. During last year’s 43-day government shutdown, ICE and Border Patrol agents continued to work without pay.
And when Republicans passed their sweeping tax and domestic policy bill last year, they allocated more than $170 billion over four years for immigration enforcement efforts to the Department of Homeland Security.
Within that pool of money, they gave $75 billion to ICE that federal immigration officials said they could continue drawing on in the event of a shutdown.
Erica L. Green contributed reporting.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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