The White House invited rank-and-file Senate Democrats to discuss government funding options, but they declined, instead opting to unveil a list of demands to rein in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in exchange for their votes to avert a shutdown.
‘The White House hopes to avoid another debilitating government shutdown, and invited Democrats for a listening session to better understand their position,’ a senior White House official told Fox News Digital in a statement. ‘It’s unfortunate their leadership blocked the meeting.’
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats unveiled their laundry list of demands to rein in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) immigration operations in exchange for their support to keep the government open.
Democrats in the upper chamber have been quietly formulating a list of legislative demands to bring Republicans to corral DHS and ICE after another deadly shooting in Minnesota over the weekend.
That incident, where Alex Pretti was fatally shot during an immigration operation in Minneapolis, spurred Democrats to reject the forthcoming six-bill funding package teed up for a key test vote on Thursday.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., laid out three requirements for Democrats as the upper chamber hurtles toward a Friday deadline to fund the government. He noted that his entire caucus was unified on the ‘set of common sense and necessary policy goals that we need to rein in ICE and end the violence.’
Schumer’s first demand was an end to roving patrols, tightening the rules governing the use of warrants, and requiring that ICE coordinate with state and local law enforcement.
Second on the list was a uniform code of conduct and accountability for federal agents, akin to the same standards applied to state and local law enforcement. Schumer contended that when those policies are broken, there should be independent investigations.
And third, Democrats want ‘masks off, body cameras on,’ and for federal agents to carry proper identification.
‘These are common sense reforms, ones that Americans know and expect from law enforcement,’ Schumer said. ‘If Republicans refuse to support them, they are choosing chaos over order, plain and simple. They are choosing to protect Ice from accountability over American lives.’
Over the last few days, Senate Republicans have signaled their willingness to negotiate reforms to the agency beyond those baked into the existing DHS funding bill, but they have added the caveat that Senate Democrats have to actually produce a list, first.
And Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has made clear that Republicans would plow ahead with the current six-bill funding package, which among other bills includes funding for the Pentagon, for Thursday’s vote. However, he hasn’t entirely closed the door on stripping the DHS bill as Democrats have called for.
Though conversations are ongoing at the rank-and-file level across the aisle, Thune said that Schumer and Senate Democrats should bring their asks to the White House and President Donald Trump.
‘If there’s a way that the Democrats have things that they want the White House could accommodate, short of having to modify the bill, that would be, I think the best way to do what we need to do here, and that is to make sure the government gets funded,’ Thune said.
Plus, if the DHS bill were stripped from the broader package and advanced through the Senate as Schumer has promised Democrats would do, it would still need to return to the House. Lawmakers in the lower chamber are still on their week-long recess and aren’t slated to return until next week.
There is a possibility that Democrats’ demands could also be split into a separate bill, similar to what Republicans offered during the previous shutdown when Schumer and company demanded a clean, three-year extension to the expiring Obamacare subsidies.
When asked if he would be amenable to that option, Schumer charged that the ‘White House has had no specific, good, concrete ideas.’
‘In terms of what we want, there’s two simple things to do to get this done, and we want to get it done, and we want to get it done quickly,’ Schumer said. ‘Number one, Leader Thune has to separate the Homeland Security bill out from the other five. He can simply put an amendment on the floor to do that.’
‘So it’s simple to do, and I am quite confident it would pass overwhelmingly,’ he continued. ‘Already I’ve seen 6 or 7 Republicans say they would vote for it. So that’s what we should do. And then we should sit down and go and come up with strong proposals to reform ICE and rein in ICE and end the violence.’