House to meet to try to pass funding bill to end partial shutdown

by · UPI

Feb. 2 (UPI) -- The House of Representatives will be back in session Monday to try to pass a spending bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security to end a partial government shutdown.

The government has been partially shut down since Saturday, as lawmakers grapple with funding the department after two high-profile shooting deaths of protesters in Minneapolis: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Senate Republicans struck a deal with President Donald Trump to pass a two-week funding bill for DHS, but House Democrats have said they won't support it.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., that Democrats won't support the bill without restrictions on immigration enforcement, The Washington Post reported.

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"We're going to have to evaluate what the real opportunity is to get dramatic change at the Department of Homeland Security. It needs to be bold, it needs to be meaningful, and it needs to be transformative," Jeffries told reporters Friday. "Absent a path toward accomplishing dramatic change, and making sure that ICE and DHS are conducting themselves like every other law enforcement agency in the country, then Republicans are going to cause another government shutdown."

The Senate voted on Friday to allow passage of five spending bills while separating out the DHS funding in order to enforce reform in the department.

Republicans have a slim majority in the House, which means Republicans need a near-unanimous vote to pass the bill.

"We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we've got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own," Johnson said on Meet the Press Sunday, The Post reported. He predicted the shutdown will end by Tuesday.

Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee, led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., sent a letter to other House Democrats Sunday lobbying colleagues to vote against the two-week funding package.

"Democrats must act now to demand real changes that protect our communities before Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection receive another dollar in funding," the Democrats wrote in the letter. "This is what our constituents elected us to do -- to hold ICE and this administration accountable when they fail to adhere to the Constitution or follow the law."

The letter listed the demands that Democrats made to reform the DHS, including ending racial profiling, sending federal agents other than ICE back to their missions, ending the occupation of Minnesota, cooperating with state and local law enforcement on investigations, using judicial warrants instead of administrative warrants, and more.

"We must claw back the blank check Republicans gave ICE and CBP in the One Big Ugly Bill [the omnibus 'Big Beautiful Bill' that funded the government]. The money provided through the One Big Ugly Bill is sufficient to fund both agencies for years with few, if any, guardrails. This Administration has already used this funding to deny Members' immediate access to detention facilities, in direct contrast to appropriations law. It is too dangerous to allow this money to continue to be spent unchecked."

They also called for the ouster of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

They said Noem "must go. She has repeatedly abused her power and violated her oath of office, endangering the security of the United States, its people, and our institutions of government."

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