Democrats have scored wins in DHS fight — but are holding out for more

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem was fired. Greg Bovino, a top Border Patrol officer, is reportedly retiring. President Trump’s deportation surge in Minneapolis has ended. And the White House has offered some new rules to limit the conduct of federal immigration officers around the country. 

In the protracted battle over DHS funding, Democrats have secured some key wins in recent weeks. But amid pressure from base voters, they’re holding out for more.

Democrats have defended that position, noting their central demand — that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) follow the same rules as other law enforcement agencies — has not been met. 

“We’ve had some good victories,” said Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), “but I think the ultimate goal is to make sure that all the reforms get done.”

But the strategy carries risks, as DHS workers deemed “essential” have gone without pay for more than a month during the budget impasse, including emergency personnel under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and airport screeners with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). 

The pay freeze has created enormous headaches for airline travelers, who are facing long lines and prolonged delays, putting pressure on lawmakers in both parties to cut a deal. Republicans, meanwhile, are accusing Democrats of threatening national security by opposing DHS funding during the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran.

“They want to defund the police,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Thursday. “And this time, it’s the people that keep the borders closed and keep our community safe and deport these dangerous people out of our country.”

Democrats remain unmoved. They say their constituents are making clear they want the party to go to the mats to secure new guardrails on ICE and CBP, an effort that was sparked by the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of immigration officers in Minneapolis in January. When they go home, they say the calls to secure those reforms are louder than any fears and frustrations with having parts of DHS unfunded. 

“I don’t think we’re ready to give in yet until we get those key issues resolved,” said Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.). “People are so frustrated in relation to how ICE has been operating. So I think without those [reforms], we’ll be at loggerheads.”

The dynamics are different in the Senate, where Democrats not only hold the fate of the DHS bill in their hands, but they also represent a more diverse range of voters and face additional pressures to cut a deal. In another budget standoff last fall, a number of Senate Democrats broke with Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reopen the government without any concessions on the ObamaCare subsidies at the heart of the fight.

Yet that clash was over something intangible: health care cuts that hadn’t yet happened. The Minneapolis shootings were captured on video and viewed by millions of people, adding a visceral element to the current debate that was absent last fall.

Perhaps for that reason, as well as the more limited nature of the current partial shutdown, even the centrist Democrats who defected last year are sticking with party leaders in demanding the changes to ICE and CBP as a condition of winning their votes for DHS funding.

That much was clear on Thursday, when Tom Homan, the White House border czar, huddled with the moderate Democrats in an effort to peel them away from Schumer’s hardline position. So far, it’s not working.

“Democrats have made their demands very clear,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who voted more than a dozen times to reopen the government during last year’s standoff, said afterwards. “I’m glad that the White House is talking with us, but they have a lot of work to do.”

The remarks forecast a long stalemate, despite the mounting pressure on Congress to reopen the DHS that’s stemming from both the snarled airport traffic and the heightened national security risks stemming from the Iran war. 

Homan, in a letter to senators earlier in the week, had offered a series of changes to DHS law enforcement rules, including an expansion of the use of body cameras and a promise not to conduct immigration raids in sensitive places like schools and hospitals. 

Yet much of the offer featured vows to “adhere to” or “enforce” existing laws, sparking ridicule from Democrats who pointed out that the administration is required to do those things anyways. 

Homan’s offer also excluded mention of several of the Democrats’ demands. And two of those proposals in particular — a ban on face masks and new warrant mandates preceding arrests — continue to be lines in the sand driving the Democrats’ opposition.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a former mayor of Kansas City, said in no instance did the city’s police force ask to wear masks. 

“If you were good and decent and lawful, you don’t care if they see you or not,” he said. 

Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), a former state’s attorney, agreed that masks are a red line, saying it’s an issue of simple accountability in cases of wrongdoing. 

“The mask issue, I think, is part of why these guys are so out of control,” he said. “They feel like there’s no repercussions because nobody knows who they are.”

Identification tags for DHS officers — something Homan is vowing to enforce — could help in that department, Ivey said. “But at the end of the day, why have one and not the other, when police departments across the country, none of them wear masks?”

Warrants are the other major sticking point. Garcia, the Texas lawmaker and a former municipal judge, called it “a core principle” — and another red line. 

“I know what a warrant is and what a piece of paper is. Theirs is a piece of paper; it’s not signed by a judge,” she said. “So I think, in my own personal view, that’s a dealbreaker.”

A wildcard in the debate has been Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), Trump’s pick to replace Noem at the top of DHS. During Mullin’s Senate confirmation hearing this week, he offered to expand the warrant mandate for federal immigration officers in certain scenarios. 

“We will not enter a home or a place of business without a judicial warrant unless we’re pursuing an individual that runs into a place of business or a house,” Mullin testified.

The softer tone was welcomed by Democrats, but it wasn’t enough to bring them any closer to a deal on funding DHS. The reason? They simply don’t trust anyone in the Trump administration to make good on their word.

“We’ll need more than a simple statement at a confirmation hearing. We need that ironclad built into the law,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters this week. “We’ve heard Trump nominees regularly give testimony at a confirmation hearing and then become cabinet secretaries and do the exact opposite.”

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