Isolating ICE
Two weeks ago, both parties agreed to fund the rest of the government for the full fiscal year, but to fund the Department of Homeland Security only until the end of this week, pending an agreement to limit ICE abuses. House Democrats sent their Republican counterparts a legislative text with ten conditions, but Republicans, getting mixed signals from the White House, never even sat down to negotiate.
So Democrats in both Houses came up with an off-ramp. “We proposed to cleave off ICE and Customs and Border Patrol, keep negotiating about that, and fund the rest of DHS,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told me. “We sent over text. But they wouldn’t engage on that. So it’s going to be a long, drawn-out negotiation.”
Yesterday, key senators left town to attend the Munich Security Conference. They are not due to return until February 23, which leaves all of DHS unfunded for now.
Republicans have tried to deflect political blame onto Democrats for letting DHS funding lapse. “If the Department of Homeland Security is defunded, the pain will extend throughout the country,” said Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (R-WY).
“Democrats know what the Department of Homeland Security does,” he said. “It funds disaster relief through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It keeps Americans safe when they fly through TSA. It protects our nation from cyberattacks through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It oversees the Coast Guard.”
Sorry, but the lapse in the rest of DHS funding was needless. An easy deal was on the table.
Republicans also tried to divert attention from the Democrats’ demands to lock constraints on ICE into legislation by announcing that ICE would be pulled out of Minneapolis. On Thursday, “border czar” Tom Homan called a press conference to announce that “in the next week, we are going to deploy those officers here on detail back to their home stations or other areas of the country where they are needed.”
Homan also tried to claim that this pullout was the result of new cooperation by Minnesota officials. “As a result of our efforts here, Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” he said.
On Tap This story first appeared in the On Tap newsletter, a weekday email featuring commentary on the daily news from Robert Kuttner and Harold Meyerson.
This is of course BS, as both Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey quickly pointed out. ICE is pulling out because of massive citizen resistance to ICE mayhem including murders, and the resulting public relations disaster for Trump.
The Trump administration even walked back Trump’s threat to have ICE monitor polling places. At a hearing Thursday, acting ICE director Todd Lyons said, in response to a question from Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), “There’s no reason for us to deploy to a polling facility.” But he refused to rule that out if ordered by Trump to dispatch ICE agents.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) has added to the list of Democratic demands for funding DHS a statutory prohibition against ICE, intelligence, federal law enforcement, or military personnel illegally patrolling polling sites. This is expected to get broad support.
The more that ICE is a losing issue for Trump and the Republicans, the more Democrats are determined to make sure the constraints are legislative and not subject to the whims of Trump. Without legal limits, Trump could change his mind and send a small ICE army into, say, New York; or declare that Lyons wasn’t speaking for the administration.
ICE and CBP, the Gestapo-like parts of DHS, have plenty of funding for their operations, from Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. But the rest of DHS doesn’t.
In the next round of negotiations, Democrats are likely to demand even more limits on ICE. Along with Jeffrey Epstein, the more that ICE stays in the news, the more it reminds voters of the toxicity of Trump.
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