Americans Shouldn’t Need The House To Save Mass Deportations From Weak Senate Republicans
House Republicans are reportedly rejecting a Senate deal Friday that would reopen the Department of Homeland Security without funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or parts of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — two agencies at the center of our immigration enforcement system.
The Senate struck the deal early-morning Friday, and it was met with celebration by Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who made clear such funding omissions were the result of Republicans caving.
“In the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Senate Democrats were clear: no blank check for a lawless ICE and Border Patrol,” Schumer said in a statement. “Democrats held firm in our opposition that Donald Trump’s rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms.”
As Fox News’ Bill Melugin reported, the Senate deal did not include any of the items on Democrats’ ICE reform wish-list, such as showing ID, congressional oversight, and agreements not to enforce the law at so-called “sensitive locations.” Such reforms were the reason Democrats “started the shutdown in the first place,” he noted. However, while both ICE and CBP have funding set aside in the One Big Beautiful Bill, Melugin pointed out that ICE’s “civilian support staff/non-law enforcement personnel” are still “getting screwed” by Friday’s Senate deal. Earlier this week he noted these “crucial” workers “haven’t been paid since the DHS shutdown began.”
House Republicans are reportedly rejecting the Senate-passed deal on Friday, instead proposing a “two-month, clean extension of all funding for DHS, including ICE,” according to Fox News’ Chad Pergram.
But the fact that Senate Republicans were willing to concede law enforcement funding to Democrats is still problematic.
The Senate agreement ultimately signaled that immigration enforcement funding can be negotiated. But if funding is negotiable, does that also mean Republicans are willing to treat immigration enforcement as negotiable?
And even if Republicans restore funding through another path, the entire ballgame has shifted. The larger concern is not whether ICE and CBP can be funded, but whether Democrats will be allowed to set the conditions.
Democrats have made clear time and time again that their priority is to illegal aliens — which is how this shutdown began in the first place. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said as much on MSNBC in 2024, telling Chris Hayes that Democrats have failed to get a bipartisan immigration bill and in doing so, “failed to deliver for the people we care about most, the undocumented Americans that are in this country.”
Enforcing the law — and our borders — is a non-negotiable for the country. Under Biden, Democrats flooded the country with millions of illegal aliens in four short years, inundating schools, hospitals, and communities, and, most importantly, putting a strain on national cohesion so much so that Democrats like Murphy openly declare they are working on behalf of foreigners. In other words, Senate Republicans should not have attempted to reward Democrats’ endorsement of lawlessness.
Americans recognized the insanity of such open border policies, with a Pew Research poll from September of 2024 finding that for 82 percent of Trump supporters, immigration was a leading issue. The poll also found a 13 percentage point increase in the number of voters who viewed immigration as “very important to their vote” since 2022. That same year, Pew also found 88 percent of Trump supporters backed “mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally.” Trump ran and was elected on a platform of mass deportations.
Yet some Republicans in the Senate tried to concede funding for the very agencies on which mass deportations depend. House Republicans may stop the deal for now, but if Senate Republicans have to be told they were wrong on this basic issue, the problem runs deeper than a single vote.
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