Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) acknowledged Sunday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may lose funding later this week, amid a stall in negotiations on immigration enforcement.
“We may well have a shutdown. I’m not sure how it’s going to play out,” Ivey told host Chris Stirewalt on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.”
Funding for DHS is set to lapse on Saturday upon the expiration of a two-week continuing resolution (CR) Congress passed last week. The short-term funding measure was part of a larger spending package that also included funds for five other agencies through September.
Democrats, who are reluctant to back another short-term CR to keep DHS open, have proposed a number of reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), housed within DHS, in the wake of the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis last month.
Among those guardrails are requirements that federal immigration officers obtain a judicial warrant before entering private property, expanded training requirements, an adoption of a standardized use of force policy and a ban on officers wearing masks.
“These are common sense solutions that protect constitutional rights and ensure responsible law enforcement,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote in a Feb. 4 letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Ivey concurred with Schumer and Jeffries, saying Sunday that the reforms are “basic requirements that 18,000 police departments across the country” follow.
“We’re not asking for anything that the police departments [don’t] already do,” the Maryland Democrat added.
But Sen. Katie Britt (Ala.), the lead GOP negotiator on the talks, called the Democrats’ list of reforms “a ridiculous Christmas list of demands for the press” and “NOT negotiating in good faith” last week.
That raises the odds of a DHS shutdown in days, which would impact a host of agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard, Secret Service, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, ICE and CBP.
