Partial Government Shutdown
Hot Button Issues Shut DHS
Remember the last time the government shut down because Congress could not agree on a budget? Seems like a year ago, which it was. Now we have the next part of that.
When Congress kicked the can down the road with yet another continuing resolution, they carved out funding the Department of Homeland Security as a separate item. This was long before the surge of ICE agents to Minneapolis and the death of two American civilians as they tried to impede deportation efforts. The politics surrounding DHS have changed significantly.
The country is still split on the deportation of illegal immigrants. A majority still reports support for deportations. But the scenes of protest coming out of Minneapolis and the deaths of two protestors have hardened the position of those who object to the Trump Administration’s mass deportation efforts. The Democrats are being pressured by their base to make changes to ICE procedures and are using the DHS funding issue to do so.
The Democrats are proposing a list of 10 changes and have refused to approve continued DHS funding until they are met. Ironically, ICE is fully funded throughout this period despite being a part of DHS. It was funded in a separate line of the Big Beautiful Bill last year. Other elements of DHS, such as the Coast Guard and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), are suspended. Most of the members of those agencies will keep working with the hope that they will receive back pay later.
One demand from the Democrats is the use of body cameras for ICE officers. The Administration has already accepted and has started to implement this policy. Body cams were a demand of the Black Lives Matter movement based on the idea that they would prove that police often act unjustly. The opposite happened. Footage has overwhelmingly exonerated police officers in cases where they have shot suspects. This is so much the case that anti-police advocates now protest body cams because they think they are too advantageous to the police. So this was an easy concession for the Administration.
Other demands, such as prohibiting ICE agents from wearing masks, are more contentious. The “masks” agents wear are usually cloths around their necks that they can pull up over the lower half of their faces. With the ubiquitous sunglasses they wear, the agents become unidentifiable.
Masked police is not a good look and it is certainly disturbing to think that there are agents of the Federal government going around carrying out armed engagements while intentionally hiding their identities. Why do they do this? They hide their faces because there is a very well organized and well funded group of protestors who use photos of these agents to track them down, identify their home addresses, and threaten them and their families. They post this information on the internet with the express purpose of encouraging people to harass them. This is known as “doxing” because it is the posting of identifying documents on the internet. It is very dangerous.
In order to keep agents and their families safe, ICE and the DHS have refused to ban masking. This has proven to be an impasse on DHS funding.
Another issue is the type of warrant used to apprehend illegals. ICE currently relies on “Administrative Warrants.” (A warrant provides officials the right to enter a property and detail the individual in question.) These are issued within the department as a result of finding that the person in question is eligible for deportation because of illegal entry or overstaying a visa. This has been the process for decades.
Democrats object that administrative warrants are a denial of due process (our old friend the 14th Amendment again). They want a judicial warrant, that is, a warrant issued by a judge in a new process for each individual with the idea that due process requires that each person have “their day in court.”
Republicans object to the judicial warrants for two reasons. First, due process has already been served because the condition of being in the country on a visa includes being removed by administrative warrant, as do the laws regarding illegal entry. The second objection is that the judicial warrants will grind the process to a halt because there are not enough judges in the system to process all these warrants. The real reason Democrats insist on judicial warrants has nothing to do with procedure, they argue. Democrats just want to stop the whole process and this would do it.
There has certainly been a pattern of liberal organizations suing the Trump administration and succeeding in lower courts (especially in DC) and then having the decision overturned in higher courts, including the Supreme Court. But each one of these cases slows down the process and delays the implementation of Trump’s policy.
These are the main issues preventing the funding of DHS. The Senate is also not in session this week, so not much can be done. But the politics of this goes beyond the specific issues.
While a majority of Americans remain pretty consistent in wanting illegal aliens deported, including non-violent illegals, they have turned against the current practice of doing so. Seeing two Americans die can do that. It has also led to a change in policy at ICE.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Krisi Noem, has had a policy of maximum visibility. She likes ICE to be very visible and she likes to have lots of video to put on social media showing people detained and deported. She likes a spectacle. She also likes to be in front of the cameras, herself, usually with a lot of military gear and a tight shirt. She’s become known as “ICE Barbie” for a reason.
Tom Homan has taken over operations in Minnesota and toned down the rhetoric a lot. The numbers of deportations has not diminished, but the publicity over them has. He has become the public face of immigration enforcement and Noem has more or less disappeared. (A very negative NYT article on her hasn’t helped.)
So the question is whether nor not a more subtle approach will swing the American people back to supporting Trump’s immigration policies. Immigration was the issue that got him elected the first time and the second. With enough support it could keep his party in control of the House of Representatives in the midterm election this year. He will need that if he wants to get anything at all passed in the Legislature and, more importantly, keep from getting impeached (again) every other week.
The next few weeks will tell us what the two parties see in their internal polls. Which side thinks its current policies are a political liability? The Coast Guard and FEMA, as well as TSA, can’t go unfunded indefinitely. One side is going to have to give.
It is interesting to note that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both recently made comments about the dangers of mass immigration and the importance of enforcement. This could be a sign that their party is nervous. We’ll see.