Senate Republicans believe that President Trump is willing to accept a potential deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security following a White House meeting on Monday night.
It would be a significant shift for Trump, who over the weekend repeatedly he would not make a deal with Democrats unless they moved separate voting legislation known as the SAVE America Act.
But Trump signaled he is open to a deal to reopen the Homeland Security Department even if it doesn’t fully fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a two-hour meeting at the White House Monday evening, according to GOP senators briefed on the meeting.
A Senate Republican source familiar with the discussion said Trump is willing to separate funding for the Enforcement and Removal Operation from the Homeland Security appropriations bill in order to get enough Democratic support it.
Under the proposal presented to Trump, Senate Republicans would pass additional money for ICE’s removal operations under the budget reconciliation process, which allows them to circumvent a Democratic filibuster in the Senate as long as the legislation being considered meets certain requirements related to the spending, taxation or deficit reduction.
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Senate Republicans told Trump that they would also attempt to pass elements of the SAVE America Act, which Trump has called his No. 1 legislative priority, in the follow-up reconciliation bill.
“I think we showed him that we can run a parallel process where we can fund DHS now and have a second reconciliation bill that would put a down payment on some of the SAVE [America] Act,” said a person familiar with the meeting.
Republican senators who met with Trump later briefed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) at the Capitol.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, told reporters as she returned to the Capitol from the White House meeting that Republicans feel they have a path to ending the Homeland Security shutdown, which will reach its 39th day on Tuesday.
“We do,” Britt said when asked whether the group that met with Trump has a solution to ending the stalemate.
Senators felt they landed in a “pretty good spot” with Trump after the lengthy meeting, according to the person familiar with the discussion.
White House border czar Tom Homan, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who runs much of the administration’s immigration enforcement policies, and newly confirmed secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin attended the meeting, according to sources familiar with it.
Britt met with Trump along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), and Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who all have good relationships with the president.
Graham, however, was tight-lipped about the prospect of whether Trump would agree to break up the Department of Homeland Security funding bill to reopen the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and other critical agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Coast Guard.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “I’m not going to say anymore, so leave me alone.”
Senate Republicans had presented a similar proposal to Trump over the weekend, when they suggested setting aside funding for ICE to allow the rest of the Homeland Security appropriations bill to pass under regular order and then use the budget reconciliation process later this year to add more money for immigration enforcement operations later this year.
But Trump emphatically rejected that offer this weekend in a private conversation and later panned the idea in an interview with NewsNation and a follow-up post on Truth Social.
“I don’t think any deal should be made on this until they approve Save America,” he told NewsNation’s Hannah Brandt.
Then Trump doubled down on that position in a post on Truth Social, writing: “I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.’”
Thune on Monday afternoon called Trump’s demand to hold off on passing a deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security until Democrats agree to the sweeping voting reform bill now pending on the Senate floor was not “realistic.”
He said there’s “almost unanimous agreement in our conference on the policy” of the SAVE America Act but warned “the idea that we would have to guarantee its passage in order to open up the government” is “not a realistic outcome.”
Senate Republicans are feeling immense pressure to end the Homeland Security funding stalemate as hours-long security lines are causing chaos at major airports in Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis and other cities.
“Millions of Americans right now are facing two-, three-, four-hour waits at airports. They’re missing their planes for spring break because the Democrats refuse to pay TSA,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was one of the first Republicans to propose breaking up the Homeland Security funding bill.
Some Senate Democrats said they were encouraged by what they heard from their Republican colleagues about the meeting at the White House.
Democrats earlier this month proposed passing the Homeland Security funding bill but setting aside the portion of the bill funding ICE until they reach a deal with the White House and GOP leaders in Congress to reform immigration enforcement operations.
“I really like the direction we’re heading,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).
“We got to get this resolved,” he said of the five-week partial government shutdown.
He said Democrats major problems with “the ICE practices but we really want to open TSA and we want to open FEMA.”
“The FACT that there is progress is very encouraging,” he said. “This is significant movement.
“We have a dispute about ICE practices. We don’t have a dispute about funding TSA, we don’t have a dispute about funding Coast Guard or FEMA,” he added. “The real issue is the ICE and the ICE practices. They were lawless and what happened in Minneapolis is shocking and should never happen again.”
The DHS shutdown began in February, after Democrats said they could not fund ICE following the killings in January, in separate incidents, of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolisy by DHS personnel.
Graham told The Hill on Friday that he’s open to moving another reconciliation bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security or to fund military operations against Iran.
“I’m open to use the reconciliation process to make America safer and break this long jam,” he said.
He said he hoped that House Republicans would unify behind a reconciliation package to help Trump carry out his efforts on nationwide immigration enforcement and border security operations.
“Hopefully our guys will rally around the idea we need to get the money to secure our borders,” he said.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had suggested earlier this month trying to pass the SAVE America Act under budget reconciliation to avoid a Democratic filibuster but some Republicans had raised serious doubts about doing so because many of the reforms in the bill are policy-related and not chiefly of a budgetary nature.
“To me, the easiest way to get the SAVE Act passed, the most efficient way, is to try to do it through reconciliation,” Kennedy said on March 9.
“And I know some people say you can’t possibly survive a Byrd Bath,” he added, referring to the procedural test for passing legislation under the budget reconciliation process. “I’ve seen things survive a Byrd Bath that I thought had no chance. … We’ve got some clever wordsmiths. You don’t know what’s gonna survive a Byrd Bath until you can argue your case in front of the parliamentarian.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a leading proponent of passing the SAVE America Act, said earlier this month that it was not drafted with the intention of passing it under budget reconciliation.
“The way it’s written, it’s nowhere near something that can be done through reconciliation. If John Kennedy or anybody else is aware of a means by which we can do it through reconciliation, obviously I’d love to review that. The bill is not written as a reconciliation bill,” Lee said at the time.
Thune also poured water on the idea of passing the SAVE America Act through budget reconciliation on March 10.
“We’ve looked at that. That’s also very, very difficult. I mean we have tried to see if there’s a way we could thread the needle and use reconciliation and you kind of come back to the same place. Reconciliation obviously is about spending and revenue. And there are ways in which you could do pieces [of the SAVE America Act] but they’d be getting money to the states but then the states could decide whether or not to actually implement the policies,” Thune explained. “We’ve looked at it. There are no easy ways to do this. Believe me.”
