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House Passes Government Funding Bill, Sets Up ICE Showdown

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WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives passed a government funding bill on Tuesday, ending a brief, partial government shutdown but setting up a showdown over the Donald Trump administration’s deadly immigration enforcement tactics.

The bill passed 217 to 214, with 21 Democrats in support and 21 Republicans voting against it.

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The legislation funds several federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, through September, but gives the Department of Homeland Security only 10 more days of funding as a way to force reforms to Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics. The bill was a product of negotiations between Senate Democrats and the Trump administration.

After immigration agents killed two American citizens in Minneapolis last month, even Republicans have acknowledged the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far, and DHS said this week it will distribute body cameras to agents operating in Minneapolis.

Still, getting a deal on broader reforms will be difficult, and lawmakers are staring at a very real chance of a lapse in DHS funding next week, which will not deprive ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies of funds but will shut down other, more politically popular parts of the department, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration.

Republican leaders are adamantly opposed to some Democratic demands, such as requiring immigration agents to obtain judicial warrants before entering people’s homes and disallowing them from wearing masks.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Republicans would insist on requiring Democratic jurisdictions known as “sanctuary cities” to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. Some states and localities have enacted measures disallowing local police, for example, from asking for the immigration status of people they encounter, reasoning immigrants will be less likely to cooperate with law enforcement if they fear deportation.

“What must be a part of that discussion is the participation of blue cities in federal immigration enforcement. You can’t go to a sanctuary city and pretend like the law doesn’t apply there,” Johnson said Tuesday.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania, said it was essential for lawmakers to reform ICE tactics. He said he would support disallowing masks and some restrictions on administrative warrants, such as for raids on houses, so long as courts can pick up the slack.

“We just need to have the judicial resources to accommodate,” Fitzpatrick told HuffPost. “So that’s got to be part of this, is adding a number of judges that can review this stuff.”

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Top Democrats split on the bill. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) argued the short-term DHS extension gave Democrats leverage to force changes on ICE, for instance, while Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) argued DHS shouldn’t get another penny.

“I talk to Republican colleagues all the time who privately confess to me that this is a disaster,” McGovern said before the vote. “This president and this administration is taking this country in the wrong direction. We have people that are being murdered in our streets by U.S. federal agents. When is enough going to be enough?

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said he opposed more funding for DHS partly because of the agency’s failure to quickly approve disaster aid requests around the country. He said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem should be fired.

“Where’s the president from ‘The Apprentice’? Where’s that guy who America tuned in night after night to watch him fire people,” Moskowitz told HuffPost. “All of a sudden, now he thinks firing is a weakness.”