They have no leverage or ability to pull back money appropriated last year. Their only leverage here was to block future funding to ICE and CBP. They still have that leverage - no new funding without reforms. It sucks that this is all the power they have right now, but they’re the minority party.
Can you cite your sources on ICE funding and how the shutdown / this deal affects it?
Personally ICE funding is something I know very little about and in doing some cursory research it’s more complex than I realized.
Here is just the first thing that pops up. ICE was funded for $75 billion that it can spend over 4 years. That was all in the “one big beautiful bill” from last summer. On top of that, ICE has $10 billion per year in its base budget. That base budget might not be funded. Sources aren’t clear on whether that $10 billion is still available, or just the OBBB $75 billion.
However anyone wants to spin this latest bill, it makes very little difference about funding ICE, that was a battle already lost.
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump
For the moment though it looks like the biggest issue may be getting the Republicans in the house to approve the bill. Since (IMHO) far too many House MAGA draw their support from the hard-core no compromise sorts, they’re more than happy to continue to shut things down and bray to their followers how they’ll never give in.
Some reporting:
In one display of anger, leaders of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus announced they would not support the Senate measure, demanding that any bill include money for border patrol, as well as one of President Donald Trump’s top domestic priorities: new voter ID restrictions.
“The only thing we’re going to support is adding that funding into the bill, adding voter ID, sending it back to the Senate, make them come back in and do their work,” said Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, who leads the Freedom Caucus.
And he downplayed the urgency felt by some of his GOP colleagues that airports will suffer in the meantime: “The president has already said he’s going to fund TSA out of funds he has.”
This is exactly my reaction to the NPR story (which I listened to rather than read, so I may have missed something), specifically of the analyst they had as a guest. I didn’t follow up with other sources though.
Yes, the NPR story also made that point. You can be as rah rah as you want to about the Democrats and their leadership in the Senate, from here it looks like they caved on the really important stuff.
I am not rah rah about Senate Democrats, but I believe the takeaway that “Democrats caved on the really important stuff” is the opposite of what actually happened. Here’s what I’ve taken away from this stand-off, which I admit could be wrong and I am happy to be corrected:
- The GOP wants to pass a budget bill that funds the Dept of Homeland Security, which includes both TSA and ICE, among many other things. They have not included any provisions that check ICE in any way.
- Senate Democrats have refused to pass this bill without new limitations on ICE, using the filibuster to block it.
- There has been a stalemate over this, resulting in TSA agents not getting paid for weeks, and now quitting and/or calling in sick because they are not getting paid, leading to heinously long lines at some airports.
- Senate Democrats have been introducing bills to fund DHS (including TSA) EXCEPT for ICE and Border Security, refusing to fund those agencies without the limitations mentioned above. They have very vocally been trying to blame long lines at airports on the GOP as a way to apply pressure.
- This appears to have worked, as the Senate passed a bill funding DHS EXCEPT for ICE and Border Security, which Democrats have been trying to do and the GOP has been refusing to do (up until now).
- This leaves ICE funding as a separate matter, where the Democrats are still trying to tie funding to reforms, which have not been abandoned. The GOP, of course, still wants to write ICE a blank check.
So, I don’t see any caving, but maybe I’m not understanding some nuance. I mean, it’s unlikely that the Dems will “win” any significant ICE reforms since they have no real power to do so at the moment, but it does look to me that they have been trying, are still trying, and forced the GOP Senate to blink for the moment.
The GOP house, being peopled entirely by leaky plastic bags filled with dog shit, is of course another story entirely.
I dont see anything like that in the NPR article.
The Dems agreed to fund DHS- except ICE and the Border patrol- In other words, they agreed to fund the TSA.
Thune separately blamed Democrats. “President Trump should never have had to step in to rescue TSA workers and U.S. air travel. We are here because, thanks to Democrats’ determined refusal to reach an agreement, there will be no Homeland Security funding bill this year.”
Speaking after the vote, Schumer said: “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.”
I dont see where the Dems “caved” at all. ICE and the BP remain without a funding bill. Or are you thinking that the Dems should have continued the Filibuster and not allowed the TSA to be funded? The TSA isnt the issue.
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The Senate left town for a two-week recess, and Democratic senators have vowed to block funding for ICE and CBP without restraints on immigration enforcement operations.
So, no, the Dems didnt Cave. They continue to say they wont fund those two agencies without concessions.
Right.
Yeah this is a small victory (and defeat for Trump), and for once doesn’t involve the Democrats caving. Not time to get out the bunting, but it’s a tiny bit of hope.
Mostly it provides the Senate a way to say it’s the House GOP that’s making this compromise fail, rather than let House Majority keep blaming the filibuster for not getting what they want.
The question is: “Is the TSA clusterfuck at the airports sufficient leverage to get GOP concessions on ICE?”
I think the answer it “no”.
Separating the two issues is good politics, IMO. Especially since the House GOP can’t get out of their own way and have no made this pretty a clearly “Long TSA lines = GOP values ICE goons more than your time” equation.
While you’re being sarcastic, it really does hurt them.
ICE is funded, so it won’t shut down and can continue to function. But what gave you the impression that this administration wants ICE to operate as usual and do its job? ICE has been involved in a massive overreach and expansion. No new funding puts a big halt on that. The idea is not to make ICE go away, but to prevent another situation like we saw in Minneapolis.
Getting Republicans to agree to restrictions on ICE are one way to accomplish that, but cutting off the money spigot might also do it (though less reliably). This is indeed significant.
There are no restrictions on how ICE operates in this bill, and the money spigot has not been cutoff. ICE is now limited to $75 billion to be spent within 4 years. That is still nearly twice their prior budget, and they can spend that all in the next year, and then come back for more.
I agree ICE needs to be stopped, but I don’t see how anything in this bill works to accomplish that.
I still fail to see this as anything except capitulation by the Senate Democrats, because the only pull back of any substance is delaying funding for CBP. Perhaps enough House Republicans will be upset about not getting both ICE and CBP funding in the bill that it will fail to pass the House. I expect enough House Democrats will support it, though, so a few angry Republicans won’t matter.
No, that is wrong. There is a refusal to give additional money to ICE, which is what the Republicans are pushing for, and Democrats refuse to cave on that unless the Republicans agree to restrictions.
Democrats cannot undo the funding that has already been provided to ICE, I am not aware of any mechanism for doing that. I’m not sure what you want them to do about that.
I agree, there is nothing the Democrats can do now to pull funding from ICE. I’m saying that it sounds really silly to claim not giving them more money is some kind of victory, when they already have all the money they need for now.
Yeah, it’s better than giving them even more, but so what? Withholding extra money is not going to stop ICE from doing anything that they want to do.
If that was the case then they wouldn’t be trying to get more funding. Clearly, there are things they want to do that require more funding.
How could it be capitulation, when this is exactly what Democrats offered at the beginning of the shutdown? They got their opening offer and didn’t have to give anything in return. It’s like if, in a salary negotiation for a new job, you said “give me a million dollars or I won’t take the job”, and they stonewalled you for two months, but then offered you a million bucks after those two months. If you took the million, you wouldn’t remotely be capitulating anything at all.
What are the concessions asked for?
You are assuming that pure greed is not a motivator, which I don’t think is tenable.
There are two issues: (1) do they have enough to do what they are doing? To expand? Or contract?
(2) Do they want more (money, power, areas to infiltrate?)
While these are loosely correlated, I will put forth that they can have excessive funding and also want more.
I thought they wanted limitations on ICE’s behavior. Particularly requiring judicial warrants and body cams, while forbidding face masks. Am I thinking of something else?
Seems to me giving up those things is like asking for a $1 million salary, and celebrating a coffee cup with the company logo.
Their opening offer was “let’s fund DHS except for ICE and CBP, and then figure out reforms for those”. That’s what Republicans in the Senate just gave them (though the House hasn’t yet agreed). Haven’t figured out reforms yet, but DHS is funded going forward minus those two lawless entities (which will have to use prior funded money).