Negotiations to avert another shutdown appear to have stalled over the weekend with just four days left to go before funding runs out.
With just four days to go before the government shuts down again if a funding bill isn’t passed, negotiations between the House and Senate over a border security package that would resolve the issue holding up a final deal appear to be stalled:
WASHINGTON — Congressional efforts to reach a border security deal ahead of another government shutdown broke down on Sunday over Democratic demands to limit the detention of undocumented immigrants, as President Trump moved more troops to the border and prepared to rally supporters in Texas on Monday.
The 17 House and Senate negotiators had hoped to finalize a border security agreement on Monday, but hours before that deadline, communications had stopped, lawmakers and aides said.
Meantime, the Trump 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 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 Friday, with memories of the 35-day partial government shutdown — the nation’s longest in history — still fresh.
“I’ll say 50-50 we get a deal,” Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” ”The specter of a shutdown is always out there.”
The impasse appears to center on Democratic demands for a limit on the number of unauthorized 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 centers would force the Trump administration to focus on detaining undocumented 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,” Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and one of the negotiators, said on Sunday. “A cap on ICE detention beds will force the Trump administration to prioritize 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.
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The looming deadline is exposing fissures in both parties. The more liberal members of the Democratic caucus, many of whom ran on abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement altogether, have been lobbying their colleagues on the committee to resist any increases in ICE funding.
