Airport madness continues as Congress can’t cut a deal.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The Department of Homeland Security shutdown will reach its 40th day tomorrow, and it seems this partisan dispute over immigration enforcement cannot be resolved. It began when Democrats refused to fund the department unless the Trump administration instituted a series of reforms restricting ICE and Border Patrol agents from committing the sort of atrocities that terrorized Minneapolis and other cities last winter. Republicans seemed open to a few small token “guardrails” for federal agents, but they insisted on all-or-nothing DHS funding. So the department’s non-immigration functions — like TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard — are essentially being held hostage.
As concerns about TSA shortages and possible Iran war–related terrorist activity grew, Senate Democrats pushed to separate immigration-enforcement funding from the rest of DHS. Critical departments could reopen, but immigration-related agencies (which are flush with cash from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act) would technically remain defunded. Republicans balked, and Donald Trump ruled out any sort of deal with the Democrats as part of his temper tantrum over the Senate’s failure to pass the toxic SAVE America Act.
But then as the airport delays worsened and Trump’s political troubles metastasized earlier this week, Senate Republicans talked Trump grudgingly into the very funding of non-immigration DHS functions that Democrats had earlier offered. Now, however, perhaps sensing renewed leverage, Senate Democrats have refused to support any DHS funding without big-time ICE reforms. And as the New York Times reports, there’s no obvious path forward:
Democrats formally rejected a Republican offer to remove money for immigration enforcement from the homeland security spending bill but without adding any no new restrictions, insisting that any deal to fund the department include meaningful changes to tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Not long after, Republicans rejected a Democratic proposal that would have added enforcement restrictions. The back and forth left the parties almost exactly where they were more than a month ago when the department shut down with the promise of bipartisan negotiations to agree on some ICE curbs.
That’s accurate, though it should be noted that the two parties have exchanged positions on the question of funding the non-immigration DHS functions. Now it’s Democrats playing hardball, and it’s likely Trump’s grudging support for a DHS deal will evaporate as quickly as it formed.
You’d have to guess that both the Republican semi-cave on DHS funding and the sudden Democratic resistance to a deal reflect a changing sense of public opinion. It makes sense that people blame the chaotic state of affairs from U.S. airports to Iran on the president’s party, since they’re running things.
It’s possible the situation is severe enough that Senate Republicans will offer enough ICE concessions to bring a DHS deal back to life. But at this point you have to wonder whether the department (and most particularly the programs that have nothing to do with immigration enforcement) will remain shuttered because neither party was willing to give up a good fight to save it.
