A bitterly divided Washington is headed for its third government funding lapse of President Donald Trump’s second term — this time, a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security over the issue of federal immigration enforcement.

With lawmakers leaving town Thursday, funding for the department is set to expire Friday at midnight. GOP leaders sent their members home after the two parties made no concrete progress toward a deal that Democrats are demanding must rein in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations after last month’s fatal shootings by federal agents of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota.

The next steps are uncertain. With talks ongoing between the White House and Democrats, the two chambers aren’t scheduled to return to Washington for 11 days, though GOP leaders could still call members back if a deal is reached.

Democrats have demanded that Trump administration end its “roving” patrols, require independent oversight of ICE, bar the deportation of US citizens and forbid ICE agents from wearing masks. Another major sticking point: Democrats want immigration warrants to be signed by a judge, not by an ICE agency official. But Republicans are firmly opposed.

“We will find out, I think, very quickly, whether or not the Democrats are serious,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters just after the chamber’s final vote Thursday. He said he hoped Democrats would soon show the GOP that they, too, are willing to compromise after the White House’s latest proposal, though he declined to say what new policies are being discussed.

“I think the White House has given more and more ground on some of these key issues,” Thune said.

One senior White House official, who declined to speak publicly, was even more blunt: “At this point it seems clear the Democrats are going to walk away from that bipartisan conversation. They’re going to shut the department down.”

“We will not be held hostage on an issue the president was elected on,” the official said.

But top Democrats insist the White House needs to come closer to the party’s demands or risk national backlash.

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a top Senate Democrat, criticized Republicans for not understanding “the depth of the anger” across the country over Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts.

“Maybe this break will allow [Republicans] to go home and get yelled at — not just by people who are progressive, but everybody who thinks this agency is out of control,” Schatz said. “It’s gonna take them maybe another week to figure out how pissed off their own voters are about the idea of a masked police force terrorizing communities.”

Behind the scenes, top Democrats and the White House have been negotiating, but Democrats have criticized the White House for being unserious in those talks, refusing to yield to the party’s biggest demands to overhaul federal immigration enforcement.

Republicans, meanwhile, have argued that the White House demonstrated its commitment to the talks by sending a full legislative proposal to Democrats the night before — as well as announcing a formal end to its ICE operation in Minnesota.

Speaker Mike Johnson called the White House proposal in the negotiations for DHS funding “eminently reasonable” and criticized some Democrats for wanting “to impose pain.”

“I saw the last proposal sent over from the White House. It is eminently reasonable,” he told CNN, adding: “It seems to me, the appearance here is that some Democrats, House and Senate, want a government shutdown. They want to impose more pain on the American people. For what? I have no idea.”

Unlike in last fall’s full shutdown government, Democrats have so far offered a clear display of unity against the GOP’s latest ICE offer. The party roundly rejected the White House’s latest proposal in the ongoing negotiations over how to rein in ICE. Only Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who has repeatedly voted against any shutdowns, sided with Republicans on the Thursday votes.

Both parties are refusing to discuss the White House’s specific proposal. But it is clear the two sides are far apart.

Johnson maintained his hardline stance against requiring judicial warrants, saying it would “shut down the deportation of virtually all illegal immigrants.”

“You can’t do that. You can’t have an Immigration and Customs Enforcement program if you have to get a judicial warrant every time you go to arrest someone. That’s not how it works. It’s not how it can work. It’s not workable,” he said.

Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have been clear that judicial reform is one of their red lines.

Jeffries said earlier Thursday that Democrats need to see policy changes to ICE’s immigration enforcement that are “bold, meaningful, and transformational” — and that the White House’s latest offer did not meet that bar.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/12/politics/dhs-shutdown-ice-congress

I hope it does get shut down so ICE agents aren't getting paid.

49%

Armchair_Politician wrote Yesterday at 10:41am:


That's the crux of it.

People like Frank keep insisting this is just about "enforcing the law" to get rid of so-called illegals, while simultaneously hand-waving away the laws, and even constitutional amendments, that Trump is openly breaking or ignoring.

It only ever reinforces the obvious conclusion. This was never about the law. It's about immigrants, including legal ones, given ICE has been repeatedly targeting people who look brown or sound like they have an accent that isn't American.  They even detain people who show their green cards.

This isn’t targeted enforcement of the kind seen under Obama or Biden, and the numbers make that unmistakably clear. The proportion of deportations involving the level of criminality used to justify these operations under Trump exposes the entire exercise as an unmitigated failure.

Worse still, the cost imposed on law-abiding citizens is wildly disproportionate, a burden never properly justified, never consented to, and never put to the public honestly. What was sold as a focused, lawful response to serious crime instead devolved into a blunt, punitive spectacle that achieved little beyond cruelty, waste, and political theatre.

And it's not merely the targeting that earns Frank's approval, it's the cruelty. The performative harshness is the point.

Strip away the slogans and every argument Frank has made collapses under even the most basic scrutiny. What remains is naked hypocrisy, and once that hypocrisy is burned away, all that's left is white supremacy.

You can see it in the absurd culture-war tantrums too, like the TPUSA All American halftime show.

Their alternative to the Super Bowl show was pure DEI. A "safe space for snowflakes". The hypocrisy is so extreme it incinerates every one of their bad-faith excuses, until there's nowhere left to hide from the ugly truth underneath.

But the weak and afraid like Frank, they keep cheering for it.  Even in winning, they still need to convince themselves they're the victims.

Frank wrote Yesterday at 12:06pm:


That's right, old boy. The illegals are being punished for illegal voting, you see, after they snuck out to the local enrolment office, showed their fake citizenship papers and sent in their RIGGED vote by mail.

Despicable stuff.

Just think, they went to all that trouble just to vote a hideous black Curry in as prez.

They only have themselves to blame, no?

Armchair_Politician wrote Yesterday at 3:23pm:


Until their paperwork is processed. So were they resettled by the US government pending resolution of their status or were they illegals who accessed the legal system after arrival?

aquascoot wrote Yesterday at 4:25pm:


Why must the left lie?

Armchair_Politician wrote Yesterday at 3:23pm:



Diversity is their strength.

Most of the 'asymum seekers' walking into the US or Europe, boating into England from France or into Spain, Italy, Greece from Africa and the ME are most certainly bogus. Such people should NOT make it to anywhere near the citizenship process.

The Bondi Beach murderers were Australian citizens, one of them even born here. Citizenship has obviously become a bogus lophole to be exploited many enemies of Western countries. These two should have been deported years ago.


How many US citizens are actually deported by ICE?  You tell us.