Democrats have made this shutdown all about making big changes to the Department of Homeland Security, and more specifically, ICE.
Dems continue to rail against ICE, with some demanding the agency be dismantled before they will even consider backing a spending bill.
Bad news for them, as one of their own confirmed that ICE does, in fact, have enough funds to continue operating.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) recently addressed the DHS funding blockage by Democrats.
Dems want to see a massive overhaul of the agency, especially when it comes to how ICE conducts its operations.
Peters explained, “And it's very unfortunate, given what we want to see, as the Democratic caucus is very united, is that we want to put in just some commonsense guardrails on actions by federal agents in DHS.”
He continued, “And basically, the relatively concise list we provided to Republicans were to make sure that federal agents have to abide by the same kind of rules and regulations that our local police in our communities follow each and every day.”
Just prior to this shutdown, Trump had pushed an offer to Democrat leadership, which they completely rejected.
When the rest of the funding package was passed, the GOP lost what leverage it had to push DHS funding through, which was explained by Democrat strategist Jared Leopold.
He stated, “Built into this is the substantially changing politics of immigration. I think Republicans are still acting like they hold a straight flush on immigration, but they clearly are only holding a pair of threes.”
Leopold is right, so the GOP is going to have to make some sort of concession or break the filibuster in order to get this funding pushed through. That seems like the only viable option here.
While part of the strategy for the shutdown was to be able to stop ICE from operating now, that has failed, as there were emergency funds in place in Trump’s big, beautiful bill that covered shutdowns.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) confirmed this during a recent interview, stating, “Well, look, we know for a fact that ICE, Border Patrol, and other agencies within DHS have enough money for them to continue their operations.”
He continued, “They have enough money, as a matter of fact, more than the United States Marine Corps. Let’s just agree that we should continue to fund the Coast Guard, FEMA, TSA, for them to continue to do their work, because it is nonpartisan and it is aligned with the goals and the understanding of what the American [public wants].”
He then took his shot at ICE, calling it an agency that has run “amok,” but I disagree. There are two root issues to this problem. The first being Biden opening our borders during his presidency. And the second being an issue the Supreme Court has failed to address: sanctuary cities. And just in case you missed it, both of those issues were caused by the Democrat Party.
