US Politics
Who’s in charge?! Hill Democrats want to know who is leading ICE reform talks – or if White House is
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Senate Democrats say they would like to come to an agreement with Republicans to fund the Department of Homeland Security that reins in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
But first, they want to know who their negotiating partner is.
They argue that while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, are ready to negotiate, they don’t know whether the White House or Senate Republicans are leading the talks. And if Senate Republicans are, then they don’t know who is leading that.
“We have different people going in different directions,” Schumer told The Independent during a pen and pad on Capitol Hill. “They’ve got to get their act together. Show us this is who to negotiate with.”
Ostensibly, Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins should bring out her talking stick and be the Republican counterpart.
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Or Alabama Sen. Katie Britt. Despite all of the jokes and memes from a few years ago after her response to Joe Biden’s final State of the Union, the freshman from Alabama wields significant power: she now leads the Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security.
But her counterpart on that subcommittee, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, is just as confused, especially since Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said they needed to talk to the White House about negotiations.
“Now he’s saying talk to somebody else,” he told The Independent. “We’ll negotiate with anybody.”
Murphy said his staff is working with Britt’s and they have submitted their proposal to rein in ICE, but have heard nothing back.
On Wednesday evening, Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries released a letter listing what they wanted from negotiations. They want to stop roving patrols of ICE agents in American cities like Minneapolis. They also want to make sure that ICE agents obtain a judicial warrant; a removal of masks for ICE agents; body cameras; guidelines for the use of force; the ability to sue agents, and independent oversight.
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But Collins accused Schumer of going back on his demands from last week.
“I noticed it’s grown enormously from the list that Senator Schumer put out last week,” she said.
Britt, for her part, criticized the demands on social media, calling it “a ridiculous Christmas list of demands for the press.”
“They continue to play politics to their radical base at the expense of the safety of Americans,” she said.
Needless to say, these negotiations are going nowhere. And other Republicans don’t want to speak out of turn.
“I don’t want to talk about any of those right now,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told The Independent. “Because you know what? Apparently, everything is being negotiated through the media, and it needs to be negotiated with the negotiators.”
This lack of coordination is probably why Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who worked with Britt to pass the Laken Riley Act, told The Independent he had little faith in the negotiations on Wednesday.
“If you hear what they’re saying, you’ve got to take what they’re saying at face value,” he told The Independent. and if they’re not willing to set some simple demands that Americans are asking for, not just to the Democrats, then I think it’s gonna be hard for us to get a deal at that point.”
These negotiations were always going to be difficult. When Republicans split the other spending bills from the Homeland Security spending bill, they chose to fund the department for only two weeks. And Homeland Security doesn’t just include ICE and CBP; it includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, the Transportation and Security Administration and the U.S. Secret Service.
In addition, ICE is already pre-funded to the tune of $75 billion thanks to the infusion of cash in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” that Republicans passed last year.
Unless Republicans and Democrats can get in the room–and agree who should be in the room–it might be dead from the start.
