The Department of Homeland Security shut down for the second time in two weeks on Saturday, two days after a last-ditch effort to keep the department behind President Trump’s immigration crackdown open came up short in the Senate.
A Republican-led bill to fund DHS through the end of September was blocked by a Democratic filibuster on Thursday afternoon. Many lawmakers from both sides left Washington, D.C., on Thursday night, making it inevitable that the department would run out of money at midnight on Friday.
Democrats have spent weeks demanding sweeping reforms to rein in the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which are both part of DHS, and pledging to use their leverage in the Senate to force Republicans into a compromise. The GOP has uniformly rejected the Democrats’ proposal, creating a stalemate that caused DHS to shut down just 10 days after it reopened following a brief partial shutdown that ended earlier this month.
Republicans have emphatically rejected Democrats’ proposals, calling them “ridiculous” and “radical.” After several days in which there appeared to be little to no serious conversations between the two sides, the GOP sent Democrats a counterproposal that Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer, described as “both incomplete and insufficient.”
DHS has taken steps to wind down its immigration operation in Minneapolis, but that hasn’t shaken Democrats from their stance that major reforms to the department must be enshrined into law.
“We’re nowhere,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, said of negotiations between the two parties on Thursday. “[Republicans] were not serious.”
Congress was out of session on Friday and both chambers are scheduled to remain on recess until Feb. 23. The calendar could change if a deal is unexpectedly struck, but there’s little optimism on Capitol Hill about the possibility of a breakthrough in the near future.
“The negotiations will continue and we will see in the course of the next few days how serious [Democrats] are,” Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Thursday.
Jeffries said Friday that he expects Democrats to put together another formal proposal for Republicans to consider.
“It will once again be in the hands of Donald Trump and Republicans to decide what’s next,” he told reporters during a brief press conference.