There’s probably an oddsmaker crunching the numbers as we speak. Which will thaw first — the D.C. snow drifts or the tension over Homeland Security funding? Heading into Friday’s deadline, the outlook is bleak for both. While the city is finally registering some above-freezing temperatures, the warmth hasn’t extended into the Hill’s negotiating rooms, where both sides seem more dug in than ever on the biggest flashpoint of a young 2026: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
But for those worried about another partial government shutdown, there is some reassurance. As most veteran staffers will tell you, if there’s anything more sacrosanct than the two parties’ principles in Congress, it’s recess. And with Presidents’ Day around the corner and a week-long break already built into the schedule, something will have to give. What that something is, no one is quite sure. Republicans have largely panned Democrats’ demands for ICE reforms, which include controversial ideas like removing agents’ face masks and mandating the impossible-to-get judicial warrants for immigrants’ arrests.
The White House has tried to engage Minority Leader (and chief rabble-rouser) Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in a compromise, but those overtures were rejected Monday night. Together with his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the men dismissed the outline as “incomplete and insufficient” in “addressing the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct.”
Republicans, on the other hand, argue that the president has already made key concessions, sending border czar Tom Homan to calm down tensions in Minnesota, draw down hundreds of agents, work more intentionally with local officials, and shift to a more targeted approach. Mandating body cameras was already in the works, thanks to the ICE portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill — as was the agency’s funding, conservatives are quick to counter, not that Schumer and company care to tell the American people that. They’re banking on voters’ ignorance, hoping they won’t notice that what Democrats would actually be shutting down is the rest of Homeland Security — TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, and a million other non-ICE related things the country relies on every day.
They’re being “entirely unreasonable,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) complained of Schumer’s party. “First of all, ICE is already funded from the Big Beautiful Bill, and there was already a provision in there that would fund paying for body cameras. So, [they’re getting] their wish taken care of there,” he pointed out on “Washington Watch.” “But they’re trying to leverage and say, ‘Well, we’re not going to pay FEMA. We’re not going to pay TSA, we’re not going to pay Coast Guard, and several other agencies.’ That’s the leverage that they’re trying to wield. And I just don’t think it’s rational or reasonable, the things that they want done.” It’s unacceptable, Biggs continued before warning, “I think they’re underestimating the resolve of President Trump and the Republicans in Congress…”
His colleague, Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), is equally perplexed at the Left’s strategy. “It just doesn’t make sense. Democrats are willing to go to the wall, shut down agencies that help us as Americans — [things like] making sure that travel continues to operate smoothly, making sure after these storms that we had in the southeast and in the South that FEMA has [the ability] to be helping where they’re needed. So, to go out and say this is going to somehow affect the outcome of what ICE is doing is just not the case.” But, once again, he stressed on Monday’s “Washington Watch,” “Democrats are showing that they’re willing to fight for the illegal in this country more than they are to fight for the American citizen.”
For House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), it’s just another day in the life of the two-year migraine he inherited as leader. “I wish we didn’t have these dramatic events every week in Congress now,” he admitted on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill” with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, “but this is the reality with small margins. We have a one-vote margin in the House now, and they have just three in the Senate. So this is what you get.”
Despite the wrench Democrats are throwing into the DHS debate, Johnson refuses to let them rob Republicans of their biggest accomplishment. “We’re really grateful, really proud, that we got the 12 appropriations bills through the whole process until the very end. Eleven are now signed into law. The president did that triumphantly in a signing service at the Oval Office. … But now, we’re all tied up on the Homeland Security bill,” he sighed. “The Democrats are politically posturing over the [ICE] issue, and we’re all sort of on the edge of our seats to see what they’ll agree to.”
That said, he acknowledged, “We obviously need to have immigration enforcement that is balanced and smart and efficient and obviously complies with the Constitution. There are always ways to tweak the processes and procedures,” the Louisianan said, “and the president has shown complete good faith in wanting to ensure that that’s true. But Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate are trying to use this for political posturing. And so, I’m not sure how exactly it’s going to sort out. But the two sides are pretty far apart at the moment.”
Considering the short runway — Friday the 13th is the deadline, ironically — it would take a miracle beyond even Mike Johnson to resolve this issue by the long weekend. Recognizing the long odds, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has been trying to prep another short-term funding extension to buy Congress more time. Hill experts just can’t envision a scenario where House or Senate Democrats vote for a DHS bill “in any form,” Punchbowl warns. “It won’t get better by next week. In the Senate, Republicans would need at least seven Democrats to join with them to clear another DHS funding patch. For now, Senate Democrats are using the imminent deadline to try to prevent a loss of momentum. Which means nearly every Democratic senator is indicating they wouldn’t support another stopgap funding bill for DHS.” Where does that leave us? Even Johnson isn’t sure.
On Saturday, he was iffy on a short-term CR. “But, of course, the amount of time it takes to move something across the floor in the Senate, you have to think ahead. Leader Thune in the Senate is doing that for the Republican side. We’ll see what happens. I’ll just tell you, it probably comes down to a couple of really tough issues that the Democrats are demanding that I think would be unworkable and unsafe.” As he has in other interviews, the speaker slammed the ban on masks. “That’s a dangerous prospect, because we know that those individuals are being doxxed. I mean, it puts their own families in physical jeopardy for their safety. So we can’t do that. We have to protect our law enforcement officers.”
The other non-starter, Johnson outlined, is the Democrats’ push for a “brand new judicial warrant requirement in order to go and apprehend someone. And that’s not workable,” he argued. (As have others.) “We have tens of millions of illegals who come across the border into the country over the four years [under] the Biden administration. It would literally be an unworkable standard. It means no one, no illegal, practically, could be apprehended.” Bogging down the courts and bringing ICE arrests to a screeching halt, however, is all part of the Left’s game plan — however onerous and unworkable it may be.
As Perkins rightly pointed out, “That’s already been a part of the immigration problem … the court backlog. So this would only make the situation worse.” Absolutely, Johnson agreed, “and it would effectively allow all illegals to stay in the country, almost all of them. And that’s obviously not something that we can do. It’s not something the American people would agree to. So we’ve got to navigate through all of that this week.”
On the mask issue, which has been a point of real contention, Biggs reiterates that agents are wearing law-enforcement vests and visible ICE jackets, so people can easily distinguish them in a crowd. “But think about this too,” he offered. “Sometimes they’re going into undercover-type situations, and they’re basically saying we want everybody to be designated and out in the open.”
FRC’s president, who spent years in the police force, agreed that it wouldn’t make sense to unmask anyone in an undercover operation. But, he countered, “I do think we need to consider this … the standard we apply to federal law enforcement [and] local law enforcement. I do think there’s some room for negotiation here.” But none of this matters, he argued, if the cities’ leaders continue to condone lawlessness. As long as there’s mayhem and rioting in the streets — and a general disdain for law and order — the chaos only gets worse.
As the speaker pointed out, “If you have friction between local and state law enforcement and the feds, that creates a problem, an inherent problem, and it is going to escalate. So we’ve got to get everybody back on the same page. We’ve got to do the work that the American people elected the Trump administration to do, and that is to apprehend and remove dangerous criminals. That’s the mission, and I think they’ll get back to it.”
In the meantime, there’s no clear way out of this mess if Democrats are locked into their corner, holding the wrong budget lines hostage, and refusing to negotiate in good faith. “I don’t know anyone in Washington who sees a ready off-ramp for this debate [that would allow] this funding to go forward,” Newsmax’s James Rosen admitted to Perkins.
But Schumer might want to be careful, he cautioned. “We’ve seen the Trump White House in 2.0 make use of shutdowns and fiscal cliffs and funding disputes in a fundamentally different way than previous White Houses have. And they have used those kinds of gaps in funding and these fiscal cliff situations to punish the Democrats, to punish blue state programs through the White House Office of Management and Budget.” He paused before adding, “And they’re very savvy about it. And to some extent, ruthless. So if there is going to be a resolution, I suspect that that could potentially put the parties together a little more swiftly.”
Until Democrats get serious and come to the table, Johnson warned, “They’re playing with fire here.”
AUTHOR
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.
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