Democrats reject White House olive branch; push for bill defunding ICE

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(The Center Square) – The Department of Homeland Security has operated without funding for over a month as the White House continues its attempts to reach a funding compromise with Democrats.

The White House’s newest counteroffer – combined with on-the-ground changes DHS has already implemented since the Minnesota riots – grants a large portion of Democrats’ demanded reforms to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement activities.

If Democrats provide the necessary votes to fund all of DHS, the administration will require body-worn cameras and “visible officer identification” on DHS agents, require agents to identify themselves when asked, limit immigration enforcement activities at sensitive locations such as schools and hospitals, expand enforcement deescalation training, and mandate that the department report to Congress on compliance with these rules.

The administration has already ended roving patrols and implemented body cameras, and is now requiring DHS to provide advanced notice of immigration enforcement operations to local law enforcement. 

Democrats, however, are refusing to budge unless all of their demands are granted, particularly a requirement that agents obtain a judicial warrant before entering private property and arresting people.

With other DHS agencies like TSA and FEMA suffering because of the partial government shutdown, Democrats instead want to fund all DHS agencies except ICE and Border Patrol. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., launched a discharge petition Wednesday, which would force a vote on a bill stripping ICE and CBP funding from the Homeland Security appropriations bill.

Jeffries accused Republican leaders of “holding the country hostage” and urged Republican lawmakers to provide the four additional votes necessary for the petition to advance. 

“We have a choice: we can fund TSA, fund the Coast Guard, fund FEMA, fund our cybersecurity professionals – or, continue to allow ICE to brutalize, and in some cases kill, American citizens,” Jeffries said in a Wednesday news conference.

Republicans in the Senate already rejected this route twice, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has told reporters that House Republicans feel the same way. He argued that isolating ICE and CBP funding from the Homeland Security bill “is really a petition to defund the police.”

“Democrats refuse to reopen TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard and these other critical functions of government unless they can reopen our borders to illegal aliens, because that’s exactly what their gambit would accomplish,” Johnson said Tuesday. “This is not a serious position, and it is not one the American people would agree with.”

ICE and CBP have not even felt the impacts of the DHS shutdown, given that Republicans' budget reconciliation bill infused the agencies with $75 billion and $70 billion, respectively.