Jeffries: House Democrats are united against GOP immigration reconciliation push

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday that Democrats are committed to stopping the “extreme” Republican budget blueprint that calls for $70 billion in new immigration enforcement funding. 

The Senate voted to adopt a budget plan that would fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — agencies at the center of a partisan dispute — through the end of President Trump’s term. 

Democrats have blocked funding for ICE and CBP in the annual appropriations process, keeping the broader Department of Homeland Security shut down for over two months as they demanded reforms to the agencies after two U.S. citizens were killed by immigration officers. Bipartisan negotiations on such policy changes did not yield a result.

Republican lawmakers are now teeing up the filibuster-proof process, without Democratic votes, to fund the two immigration enforcement agencies while advancing a separate bipartisan measure funding the rest of DHS.

“Republicans have made clear that their priority is to continue to fund ICE and the violent Trump mass deportation machine, as opposed to making life better for the American people,” Mr. Jeffries, New York Democrat, told reporters during a Thursday press conference.

GOP leaders are pushing to quickly enact the party-line bill, with House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana supporting keeping this budget reconciliation effort narrowly focused on immigration funding.

He has said his conference wants to approve that funding before taking up a Senate-passed bill to fund the rest of the department.

Mr. Jeffries said, “Every single senator, every Democrat and every Republican, supports the bipartisan DHS funding bill that House Republicans have refused to take up because they want to continue to jam their extreme ideology down the throats of the American people.”

DHS’ shutdown is by far the longest funding lapse in history, and the department’s secretary, Markwayne Mullin, warned this week that the emergency funds used to pay DHS workers will run out by early May.