Democrats and the White House reportedly reached a deal to withhold funding for ICE just one day before the federal government is set to shut down.
According to AP News, the bill to fund the government through September will not include the Department of Homeland Security, which funds ICE. However, Homeland will continue to be funded for two weeks while Democrats and Republicans continue to work out a separate deal.
The deal comes after Democrats, with the help of eight Republicans, voted down a funding bill earlier Thursday that would’ve averted a shutdown, teeing up yet another battle between Democrats and Republicans.
“Until ICE is properly reined in and overhauled, the DHS funding bill won’t have the votes to pass the Senate,” said Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The funding package, passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last week with few Democratic votes, includes six bills that fund most of the federal government. However, after the second fatal ICE shooting in Minnesota, Democrats vowed not to approve the spending package until the Trump administration agreed to make reforms to ICE.
“I voted NO on the funding package that includes 10 BILLION dollars of funding for ICE. I meant it when I said ‘Not another penny.’ We must end the violence and intimidation that ICE has brought to our communities,” said Senator Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland after Thursday’s vote.
Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia said of the federal agency that has hired 12,000 additional ICE agents in less than a year: “Here’s the unspoken truth. ICE has become accountable to one person only: Donald Trump.”
The Atlanta pastor accused the criminally convicted president of “building a paramilitary force with no guardrails and it’s already trampling our rights as Americans.”
If Congress is unable to pass a funding package by Friday at 11:59 p.m., the federal government will see its second shutdown in less than three months. The last shutdown, which ended in defeat for Democrats who were fighting to restore Obamacare subsidies to avert skyrocketing health care premiums, lasted a record 35 days. The shutdown left hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed or working without pay, and reduced or terminated government services, including SNAP.
Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross told theGrio that the risk of a government shutdown is worth the political fight for Democrats, considering the magnitude of Trump’s ICE operations in cities across the country, like Minneapolis and Chicago.
“The sheer amount of Black and Brown people, whether they were American citizens or not, who have been beaten, who have been bloodied, who, unfortunately, have died as a result of this ongoing anti-immigration sentiment is real,” said Cross, who said Democrats “should have done something about it sooner.”
“I definitely think that our government is going to barrel into a shutdown. How long will it be? Who knows,” she continued. “But this is the only bite of the apple that they will have with this administration to lower the temperature as it relates to how ICE is showing up in our communities, and they should take it because we don’t know if that opportunity comes up again.”
Ironically, a potential government shutdown would also have a disproportionate impact on Black and Brown communities, as did last year‘s shutdown. However, Cross said those same communities also can’t afford the abuse they are currently enduring by federal law enforcement.
“We already know that police in Black and Brown communities, even outside of ICE, have a long history of abusing people and their rights, even of citizens,” she told theGrio. “So yes, I definitely think that at this point, Democrats have to push as hard as they can to get some level of accountability, but also to ensure and enshrine that ICE is not overreaching in how they are policing these communities.”
She added, “Because right now, if this is to continue, not only will it spread to other cities across the country, but more and more people will die.”
