House Democrats aren’t going to rubber-stamp a two-week CR to keep funding DHS while reforms are negotiated.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries laid out the Democratic position on ABC’s This Week:
What is clear is that the Department of Homeland Security needs to be dramatically reformed. We share that view as does Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats in a variety of different ways. Body cameras should be mandatory. Masks should come off. Judicial warrants should absolutely be required consistent with the Constitution in our view before DHS agents or ICE agents are breaking into the homes of the American people or ripping people out of their cars.
We need to make sure that there are complete and independent investigations so that when ICE or DHS agents break the law, they are held accountable not by the Department of Justice, which has no interest in actually conducting a fair investigation in our view, but by state and local authorities.
And we need to reiterate that the detention and deportation of American citizens off the table, and using taxpayer dollars to brutalize everyday Americans or violently target law-abiding immigrant families needs to be off the table.
Jeffries already told Johnson that Democrats would help him suspend the rules to pass the CR by unanimous consent.
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John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News posted about the House Democrats’ Sunday conference call on X:
During House Democratic Caucus call, Jeffries said he told Johnson on Saturday that he wasn’t going to commit to a floor vote before speaking to his colleagues on government funding. Jeffries needed to see how they could get to a deal on DHS funding. House Dems strongly no
Max Cohen of Punchbowl News reported that the Democratic response to funding ICE as:
Overwhelming reaction of House Dems during caucus call re: DHS bill: “Hell no”
Laura Weiss of Punchbowl News added more from the call on X:
News: HOYER and CLYBURN both told House Dems on their private caucus call that they should vote YES to pass the government funding package this week
It is difficult to see Hoyer and Clyburn actually voting yes if the rest of the caucus is a no.
What this means is that Mike Johnson is going to have to scrounge up a majority of Republicans to pass a rule and then the final vote.
The House isn’t voting on the funding bills separately.
Johnson is holding one vote on agreeing with the Senate on all five bills.
DHS is already shut down, and Democrats aren’t going to vote to open it back up without real reforms to ICE.
Buckle up for a very interesting week in the House.
What do you think about Democrats saying hell no to funding ICE? Join the discussion in the comments below.