Budget talks resume despite border spat
Immigrant detentions, border wall issues may lead to 2nd shutdown.
Border secuWASHINGTON — rity negotiations are teeter- ing just days before a poten- tial new government shut- down. The turmoil is testing the changed balance of power in Washington, with lawmakers engaged in a sparring match over immigration policy that is challenging their ability to reach any accord.
Republicans say Dem- ocratic demands to limit immigrant detentions by federal authorities are a deal breaker — eclipsing the bor- der wall issue for now — and represent overreach by top Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Cal- ifornia.
The two sides also remained separated over how much to spend on President Donald Trump’s prom- ised border wall. A Friday midnight deadline is looming to prevent a second partial government shutdown.
Lawmakers hoped to get the talks back on track at a meeting on Monday afternoon.
The plan is to keep pushing for a deal, in part because the underlying spending measure funds a bevy of Cabinet departments and represents months of work on Capitol Hill. A collapse of the negotiations could imperil budget talks going forward that are required to prevent steep spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies.
But the negotiations hit a rough patch Sunday amid a dispute over curbing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the federal agency that Repub- licans see as an emblem of tough immigration policies and Democrats accuse of often going too far.
Trump blamed Demo- crats in the migrant detention dispute, tweeting, “The Democrats do not want us to detain, or send back, crim- inal aliens! This is a brand new demand. Crazy!”
Trump met Monday after- noon with top advisers in the Oval Office to discuss the negotiations before heading to Texas for a rally.
The fight over ICE detentions goes to the core of each party’s view on immigration. Republicans favor rigid enforcement of immigration laws and have little inter- est in easing them if Dem- ocrats refuse to fund the Mexican border wall. Dem- ocrats despise the proposed wall and, in return for bor- der security funds, want to curb what they see as unnec- essarily harsh enforcement by ICE.
People involved in the talks say Democrats have proposed limiting the number of immigrants here ille- gally who are caught inside the U.S. — not at the bor- der — that the agency can detain. Republicans say they don’t want that cap to apply to immigrants caught committing crimes, but Demo- crats do.
“ICE is being asked to ignore the laws that Congress has already passed,” said ICE Deputy Director Matt Albence on a media call organized by the White House. “It will be extremely damaging to the public safety of this country. If we are forced to live within a cap based on interior arrests we will immediately be forced to release criminal aliens that are currently sitting in our custody.”
Democrats say they proposed their cap to force ICE to concentrate its internal enforcement efforts on dangerous immigrants, not those who lack legal authority to be in the country but are productive and otherwise pose no threat. Democrats have proposed reducing the current number of beds ICE uses to detain immigrants here illegally from 40,520 to 35,520.
But within that limit, they’ve also proposed limiting to 16,500 the number for immigrants here illegally caught within the U.S., including criminals. Republicans want no caps on the number of immigrants who’ve committed crimes who can be held by ICE. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the proposed limits on detention beds “absurd.”