The Department of Homeland Security is expected to shut down early Saturday morning as congressional Democrats and the White House remain at an impasse over new restrictions on federal immigration agents.
The shutdown beginning at 12:01 a.m. Saturday would impact about 13 percent of the federal civilian workforce, including the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard.
But Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the main targets of Democrats’ outrage — would be able to continue immigration enforcement efforts due to an influx of funding from the Republican tax and spending law passed last summer.
Despite the stalemate, both chambers of Congress have already left Washington and do not plan to return until Feb. 23 after a scheduled week-long recess that will include, for some senators, a trip to the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) have said their members will return to Washington if a deal is struck, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has told members not to go on government-funded trips over the break in case they need to come back to vote.
As they prepared to leave for the week Thursday, both parties blamed the other for the impending partial shutdown.
“Every iteration of this gets a step closer because I think the White House is giving more and more ground on some of these key issues, but so far they’re not getting any kind of response from Democrats,” Thune said. “I think if people are operating in good faith and actually want a solution, that deal space is there. I think this can get done.”
The White House sent Democrats a counterproposal Wednesday night, which Democrats dismissed as insufficient to earn their votes.
“Their proposal is not serious, plain and simple. It’s very far apart from what we need,” Schumer said. “We’re ready to have good, serious proposals supported by the American people. They’re not.”
Democrats have refused to pass an annual appropriations bill for DHS after federal immigration officials killed two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renée Good, in Minneapolis during the largest immigration enforcement operation in the agency’s history. Democrats demanded new accountability measures for field agents, including requirements that agents wear body cameras and don’t wear masks, and that agents get judicial warrants before entering people’s homes.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) told reporters Thursday that Democrats in both chambers are aligned in stopping DHS funding without “dramatic changes that are bold, meaningful and transformational.”
“It’s a rogue agency right now using taxpayer dollars to do harm to the American people,” he said.
Many Republicans have said they’re open to potential changes, but rejected calls for immigration officials to identify themselves, arguing that it could make them easier doxing targets. Others are furious that Democrats are forcing a shutdown over a policy they see as their marquee issue.
“The electrical cord that brought President Trump into office both times was the open-borders crowd and what they did to this country,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri). “The American people want deportations, and not just of the worst of the worst.”
More than 60 percent of people think the deployment of federal immigration agents in U.S. cities has gone too far, according to a poll conducted in early February by AP-NORC, and more than half of respondents said President Donald Trump has gone too far in his efforts to deport immigrants illegally living in the U.S.
Congress faced a similar situation late last year, when Republicans and Democrats deadlocked over expiring subsidies that lowered costs for Affordable Care Act health insurance plans. Without a deal in place to preserve them, Senate Democrats refused to back new spending bills, leading to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. That shutdown ended with a promise to vote on extending the subsidies, which failed.
Lawmakers have now funded all other federal agencies through Sept. 30, limiting the scope of this shutdown.
During a government shutdown, all federal functions necessary for public safety, national security and protecting government property may continue, though employees work without pay. All other government employees are temporarily furloughed. The first missed pay period would be March 3.
DHS has not publicly released an updated plan for how the agency would continue to operate during a shutdown. But its last shutdown plan, released late last September, indicate that 91 percent of its employees would continue to work without pay.
“DHS essential missions and functions will continue as they do during every shutdown,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to The Post. “However, during a shutdown, many employees will be forced to work without pay, putting strain on the frontline defenders of our nation.”
DHS received $170 billion through the Republican tax law passed last year, including $75 billion for ICE alone — ensuring the agency could continue its controversial enforcement operations despite the funding lapse.
Immigration agents in Minnesota have repeatedly clashed with protesters and state and local officials since the beginning of Operation Metro Surge, which began in December, and have been filmed using aggressive tactics against U.S. citizens and undocumented people without criminal records.
Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, announced Thursday that the agency would end its enforcement campaign in the Twin Cities. But multiple Democratic senators said that’s not enough to convince them to back off of their demands.
“I’m a little bit of a show-me-the-money kind of gal right now, I’m going to see what’s going to actually happen,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) said Thursday. “But understand that I don’t think that has any bearing on the negotiations. The question of the negotiation is whether ICE is going to continue to use these illegal and dangerous tactics.”
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