Another week, another looming government spending deadline.
In the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis over the weekend, Democrats are demanding Republicans put a list of reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a spending bill lest there be another government shutdown.
Almost as soon as Customs and Border Protection officials shot and killed Pretti, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats would oppose the government funding bill if it included money for the Department of Homeland Security, which houses both ICE and CBP.
Schumer made the demands even more concrete on Wednesday: ending the roving patrols of ICE agents in cities like Minneapolis; requiring search warrants; cooperation with state and local law enforcement; a uniform code of accountability; removing masks for ICE agents and body cameras.
“In fact, they're the types of policies that all of our local police departments have to live with every single day,” Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told The Independent.
Some of this is in line with what Democrats demanded in the spending bill after the killing of Renee Good. That spending bill, which all but seven Democrats in the House opposed, had $20 million for body cameras. And some of the agents who took part in Pretti’s killing wore body cameras.
But it looks like Democrats see this as a chance to enact real reforms since many departments of the federal government would run out of money by the end of the week. And they feel they have a winning hand, given how public opinion has turned against ICE.
“Do they want to provoke a shutdown, defending ICE?” Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, told The Independent. This is especially salient given that King voted to keep the government open during each of the votes during the last shutdown, given that he did not want to give the Trump administration carte blanche to cut whatever it wanted.
Democrats argue that this should be fairly easy to enact as the Senate is set to have its votes on the government spending package–known as a “minibus” bill–this week.
“That would be very straightforward to execute by an amendment,” Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, told The Independent. “If there is a government shutdown, that is John Thune's choice.”
But here’s some tough medicine: For one, ICE is still sitting on a $75 billion cash pile regardless of the government spending package, thanks to the One Big, Beautiful Bill. That money will be spent regardless of the government passing its funding package.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told The Independent he hoped to claw back some of that money.
“Under that circumstance, they would at least have to dig into the monies they have, rather than get a fresh supply of money,” he told The Independent about whether a government shutdown would happen.
But even then, Democrats are in the minority, and in a steep one at that. They have only 47 seats in the Senate, which is enough to filibuster, but they’d need 13 Republicans to defect and vote with them. In short, Democrats have enough gas in the tank to drive the car into a ditch, but lack the tools to get it out.
Still, they think they have public opinion on their side.
“I think in the face of the horror that people are watching in Minneapolis, it's going to be hard for them to defend shutting down the half the government when that's not something we're demanding and saying no to any and all reforms to DHS,” Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security, told The Independent.
But here’s another tough reality check: Even if this were to pass the Senate, it would still need to get through the House, and there’s no guarantee Speaker Mike Johnson would take it up.
King said the House might take it up.
“At least I am not talking about radical proposals. I'm talking about common sense proposals to put some limitations on the activities,” he said.
But as of Wednesday evening, Johnson had yet to release a statement about the killing of Pretti.
