Democrats slam White House counteroffer on immigration enforcement as ‘insufficient’

Democratic congressional leaders called the White House’s counteroffer to their immigration enforcement demands “incomplete and insufficient.”

Senate and House Minority Leaders Charles E. Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrats, used those words in a joint statement released late Monday to describe the initial GOP response to their 10-point list of demands they want met to support a Department of Homeland Security spending bill.

Mr. Jeffries separately expanded on those thoughts in public comments Tuesday morning, calling the White House counterproposal “woefully inadequate.”

“It’s not a serious offer,” he said. “It is not designed to bring about the type of dramatic change that is necessary in order to get ICE under control.”

Mr. Jeffries said the White House proposal makes clear Republicans are not open to requiring judicial warrants, prohibiting excessive use of force and mandating independent investigations into any such incidents or “the type of training that is needed in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being used to brutalize American citizens.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, said Mr. Jeffries is violating an agreement leaders made to keep the details of their negotiations private.

But Mr. Thune responded to the claim about judicial warrants, saying Republicans believe that creating such a requirement would prevent immigration enforcement agents from doing their job.

“Administrative warrants go back 50 years or more,” he said of the legal authority ICE uses for arrests.

Mr. Thune said several “nonnegotiables” are on both sides, but also areas of potential “common ground.”

He did not expound on those, but he previously pointed to requiring ICE to use body cameras and to step up their training as proposals with bipartisan support.

Mr. Jeffries also said the White House offer fails to include “detention center reform.”

The Democrats want to ensure all detainees, whether housed in an official or makeshift detention facility, have immediate access to an attorney and that officials verify the arrested person is not a U.S. citizen before they are held in detention.

They also want to prohibit DHS from limiting congressional lawmakers’ access to detention facilities for oversight purposes.

Democrats expanded on their public 10-point list with legislative text they shared privately with the White House and congressional Republicans. They now expect the same in return.

“Republicans shared an outline of a counterproposal, which included neither details nor legislative text,” Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries said in their joint statement.

The text is being worked on, Mr. Thune said.

“The Dems took them a week to get their proposal up here, and the White House now in 48 hours has turned around and come up with a counterproposal,” he said. “And to me at least, that looks like forward progress.”

To allow that progress to continue, Mr. Thune said Congress will need to pass a bill extending DHS stopgap funding that expires Friday, but he has not decided for how long.

Mr. Jeffries said he is a “hard no” on another stopgap, saying, “Republicans are trying to stall for time.”

Mr. Thune said House Democrats’ position is “no big surprise, since they haven’t voted for anything yet.”

He said he has not talked to Mr. Schumer to see if his caucus would support a stopgap, but said anyone interested in getting an outcome should want to provide additional time.

Mr. Schumer did not directly address the need for a stopgap in his morning floor remarks Tuesday, but suggested he is working off the current Friday deadline.

“The clock is ticking for Republicans to sit down with Democrats in a serious way to rein in ICE and end the violence,” he said.