Democrats send Trump DHS funding counteroffer as agency is shut down

Congressional Democrats sent a counteroffer to the White House and Republicans in negotiations to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, a spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday night.

Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats are locked in negotiations with President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans about imposing new restrictions on federal immigration agents in exchange for funding DHS. The agency shut down early Saturday morning after two weeks of stopgap funding ran out.

The negotiations over DHS funding are heightened after federal immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens during an immigration surge in Minneapolis. Democrats demanded that DHS funding be stripped from a package appropriating money for a handful of other agencies in the wake of the shootings and forced negotiations on immigration enforcement.

The Trump administration has since said it would wind down the Minneapolis operation.

Democrat didn’t say what’s in their counteroffer. Schumer’s office didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on details of the proposal.

Democrats have pushed for a ban on agents masking their faces, mandatory body cameras, a requirement for judicial warrants for immigration arrests and an end to “roving patrols,” among other priorities. The White House and Republicans have pushed back on the mask ban and judicial warrant requirements.

The White House sent an initial counteroffer to a Democratic proposal last week. Democrats threw cold water on that, arguing it did not adequately address their concerns.

Democrats have less incentive to capitulate during this latest spending standoff, especially given the limited scope of the shutdown and recent polling showing that most Americans feel Trump’s immigration policy has gone too far.

“Built into this is the substantially changing politics of immigration. I think Republicans are still acting like they hold a straight flush on immigration, but they clearly are only holding a pair of threes,” Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist who has worked on the Hill and for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, said in an interview.

Many DHS employees are still working despite the shutdown, as much of the agency is deemed essential during a closure and parts of it are funded through last year’s massive tax and spending bill. But essential employees may be forced to work without pay if the shutdown drags on for a long time. That includes employees at DHS subagencies, including the Transportation Security Administration, Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Immigration enforcement…