Shutdown looms as talks collapse
Negotiators have until Friday for deal
WASHINGTON: Congressional efforts to reach a border security deal before another government shutdown broke down on Sunday over Democratic demands to limit the detention of unauthorised immigrants, as President Donald Trump moved more troops to the border and prepared to rally supporters in Texas yesterday.
The 17 House and Senate negotiators had hoped to finalise a border security agreement by yesterday, but hours before that deadline, communications had stopped, lawmakers and aides said.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s administration was moving on its own to fortify the southwestern border with thousands of active-duty military troops. The number of deployed troops on the Mexican border was set to exceed the high of 5,900 reached around the November elections, as about 3,700 active-duty troops were being sent to assist with the Department of Homeland Security’s border patrol efforts.
Senior officers are voicing greater worries that the deployed troops are not conducting the missions and training needed for their regular missions, while other military units must now pick up the routine duties on behalf of their deployed colleagues.
But efforts to reach a broader, bipartisan deal on border security bogged down, days before much of the government is set to run out of funds at midnight on Friday, with memories of the 35-day partial government shutdown still fresh.
“I’ll say 50-50 we get a deal,” Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on Fox News Sunday. “The spectre of a shutdown is always out there.”
The impasse appears to centre on Democratic demands for a limit on the number of unauthorised immigrants already in the country who could be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to aides familiar with the talks. Democrats say a cap of 16,500 beds in ICE detention centres would force the Trump administration to focus on detaining unauthorised immigrants with criminal records instead of using indiscriminate sweeps that drag in otherwise law-abiding residents.
“For far too long, the Trump administration has been tearing communities apart with its cruel immigration policies,” Rep Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif and one of the negotiators, said on Sunday. “A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration to prioritise deportation for criminals and people who pose real security threats, not law-abiding immigrants who are contributing to our country.”
Republicans demanded an exception to the cap for criminals, according to an aide familiar with the negotiations. Democrats declined, saying their 16,500-bed cap left more than enough room for real criminals.
But just days after he used his State of the Union address to take an uncompromising line on a border wall, Mr Trump was being challenged on a new front in the immigration wars. The president took to Twitter on Sunday afternoon to say Democratic negotiators “are behaving, all of a sudden, irrationally”.
“They don’t even want to take muderers into custody! What’s going on?” he said, a charge that Democrats called categorically false.
The looming deadline is exposing fissures in both parties. The more liberal members of the Democratic caucus, many of whom ran on abolishing ICE altogether, have been lobbying their colleagues on the committee to resist any increases in ICE funding.
Democratic negotiators held a conference call on Sunday morning to discuss options, according to a Democratic aide, but did not settle on a final decision on how to move forward. Another short-term spending bill could prevent a lapse in funding on Friday, though lawmakers have expressed reluctance at punting again on a final agreement.
Still, Sen Shelby and Sen Jon Tester, D-Mont and a member of the negotiating committee, said on Sunday that they had not given up.
Other sticking points remain, including how much money to allocate for barriers at the border.