Senate GOP advances Homeland Security funding, leaving Dems aside

Benjamin Weiss

WASHINGTON (CN) — Senate Republicans will meet with President Donald Trump this week to lay the groundwork for a budget reconciliation process that would fund the stagnant Department of Homeland Security and end a nearly two-month-long shutdown, party leaders said Thursday.

The move is the first step in the GOP plan to reopen the shuttered agency that will see lawmakers set the budget for most DHS programs through the usual appropriations process and fund its immigration enforcement operations through a separate procedure that can clear the legislature without any Democratic involvement.

Speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader John Barrasso said he and Senator Lindsey Graham — chairman of the upper chamber’s budget committee — would travel to the White House on Friday to discuss the budget resolution that would fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

Barrasso said the measure would aim to fund immigration enforcement in “a targeted way” and would “get it done fast.”

“We’re in this position, which I believe is dangerous and reckless, because of the Democrats shutting down a portion of the government that has to do with national security,” said the Wyoming Republican. “Democrats have chosen to stand with illegal immigrant criminals over law-abiding American citizens.”

The Homeland Security Department has been in a state of partial shutdown since late February, after Senate Democrats refused to agree to a funding plan for the agency without significant reforms to ICE and Border Patrol operations. The partisan breakdown came during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, during which federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens.

Senators last month agreed to a plan that funded most DHS programs, including the Transportation Security Administration and federal disaster management, while peeling off some immigration enforcement budget. Democrats framed the deal as a victory, though they did not secure any of the reforms to ICE and Border Patrol operations they’d initially demanded.

The House initially rejected the Senate-passed plan but has since relented. The lower chamber, still on Easter recess, has yet to vote on the measure.

Barrasso said Thursday his meeting with Trump would be a “broad discussion” on a number of topics but that party leaders would emerge with instructions for the Budget Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee about how to proceed with the reconciliation process for immigration enforcement funding.

Reconciliation is an upper chamber budgetary measure that allows the majority party to pass spending legislation without input from the minority party. Republicans have already used budget reconciliation during Trump’s second term, passing such a resolution last summer alongside the president’s marquee “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

Barrasso told reporters Republicans were once again preparing to “go it alone” thanks to a lack of Democratic cooperation, pointing to the ongoing war in Iran as evidence that rapid action was needed to ensure U.S. national security priorities are met.

The top Republican also demurred on questions about some members of his own party who had demanded Congress approve the entire DHS budget through reconciliation, rather than just immigration enforcement programs, thereby cutting Democrats out of the process entirely. Barrasso said he’d be “discussing those things” with Trump on Friday but that his priority was getting U.S. border security funding back online.

“What we’re telling you today is we’re moving ahead despite an incredible obstruction by the Democrats,” he said.

Immigration enforcement programs have remained largely funded despite the ongoing DHS shutdown, thanks in part to roughly $75 million in spending greenlit by Congress in the Trump budget measures approved last summer. But the agency funding lapse has more severely affected other parts of the homeland security apparatus — most visibly TSA, where staffing shortages have led to severe delays at airports across the country.

Both the House and Senate are expected to return from Easter recess next week.