DHS

WASHINGTON — Less than a week after he and other House Republican lawmakers rejected a Senate plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security — but not its immigration enforcement operations — Speaker Mike Johnson has made a complete about-face.

Johnson’s embrace of a two-track Senate bill marks a sharp reversal, after he had derided it as a “joke,” and said he was “quite convinced that it can’t be that every Senate Republican read the language of this bill.”

But now that Johnson appears to be fully on board, securing support from his own conference could prove more difficult after a sizable group of House Republicans blasted the Senate-passed bill last week.

President Trump said Thursday he will sign an order to pay all Homeland Security employees who have gone without paychecks during the partial government shutdown that has reached a record 48 days.

Trump used a similar maneuver to resume pay for the Transportation Security Administration after many employees had called out from work, resulting in long delays at airport security lines for travelers. Trump’s latest intervention is expected to apply to other non-law enforcement employees at the department, including many employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Coast Guard and the agency responsible for coordinating federal cybersecurity efforts.

Despite that unilateral move announced in a social media post, the funding lapse for some Homeland Security needs is likely to stretch into next week as the House contemplates passing the very same Senate plan it previously rejected.

There was no legislative resolution Thursday after both the House and Senate met for just a few minutes in pro forma sessions. Nonetheless, the Republican leadership and Trump have coalesced around a plan to fully fund Homeland Security as part of a two-step process. The agreement puts the congressional leaders on the same page for ending the impasse after they had pursued separate paths that resulted in Congress leaving Washington for its spring recess without a fix.

During the brief sessions, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) put aside the House plan to fund the entire department for 60 days. Then the House met briefly without taking up the bipartisan Senate plan that had been worked out with Democrats, though Thune is looking toward eventual passage.

“I don’t know the particulars around what the House will do with it,” Thune told reporters. “My assumption is, at some point, hopefully, they’ll move it.”

Johnson’s about-face

Johnson (R-La.) and Thune announced Wednesday that they would return to the Senate measure, which funds most of Homeland Security with the exception of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol. Republicans will try later to fund those agencies through party-line spending legislation that could take months to finish.

Neither outcome is guaranteed, and the strategy could potentially still face opposition from the GOP’s ranks even though Trump has given his support.

House Republicans held a conference call later Thursday to discuss the next steps. The GOP leadership indicated to lawmakers that it does not expect to recall them to Washington during the spring recess; they are due back April 14.

Public backlash was swift after lawmakers left Washington last week without a resolution, with the tabloid website TMZ posting paparazzi-style photos of members at airports and out of town. The regularly scheduled break, while drawing criticism, is typically used by lawmakers to reconnect with constituents and travel abroad.

Lawmakers also heard from White House budget director Russ Vought. The White House is expected to release Trump’s 2027 budget proposal on Friday.

Funding ICE remains a hurdle

Democrats in both chambers were aligned last week with the Senate’s plan, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York blamed House Republicans on Thursday for taking no action on it during the brief morning session.

“The deep division and dysfunction among House Republicans is needlessly extending the DHS shutdown and hurting federal workers who are missing another paycheck,” Schumer said.

Johnson will look to persuade the most conservative lawmakers within his conference to go along with the two-step approach agreed upon with the president, and Trump’s latest social media post could help. The president thanked Thune and Johnson for their work, and sought to project Republican unity.

“Republicans are UNIFIED, and moving forward on a plan that will reload funding for our FANTASTIC Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement Officers,” Trump wrote.

Many in the GOP conference have taken the stance that ICE and the Border Patrol need to be included as part of any funding agreement.

“Let’s make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) posted on X. “If that’s the vote, I’m a NO.”

Meanwhile, the budget package that Trump wants voted on by June 1 is expected to fund ICE and Border Patrol through the remainder of Trump’s term, as a way to try to ensure those agencies are no longer at risk from Democrats objecting to his immigration enforcement agenda.

Thune acknowledged the potential hurdles to that route, such as efforts to expand the scope of the bill. He said the goal is to keep it “as narrow and focused as possible” in order to pass it “with haste.”

The vast majority of Homeland Security employees have reported to work during the shutdown, but many thousands have gone without pay. As more Transportation Security Administration agents called out from work, there was increasing frustration for air travelers confronted by long waits at some airport security lines. Those bottlenecks appeared to be clearing this week as agents began receiving backpay after Trump signed an executive order.

About 10,000 FEMA workers are being paid because their wages come out of the non-lapsing Disaster Relief Fund. At least 4,000 FEMA employees are furloughed or currently working without pay.

Freking and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security is pausing the purchase of new warehouses intended to house immigrants as it scrutinizes all contracts signed under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, according to a senior Homeland Security official.

The development comes just days after the new Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, was sworn in last week to lead a department that was steeped in controversy during Noem’s tenure but also central to President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. News of the pause was first reported by NBC News.

The official also said that warehouse purchases that were already made are also being scrutinized.

When asked about reports of the pause, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that “as with any transition, we are reviewing agency policies and proposals.”

The Department also noted that Mullin said during his confirmation hearing that he wanted to “work with community leaders” and “be good partners.”

Mullin inherited a $38.3 billion plan to boost detention capacity to 92,000 beds by acquiring eight large-scale detention centers, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers.

The plan was hatched during Noem’ s tenure but immediately ran into intense opposition around the country by residents and communities opposed to such large Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in their neighborhoods.

Many objected on moral grounds to ICE’s presence in their neighborhoods, while others questioned whether the facilities would be a drain on local resources, such as sewer and water systems.

So far, 11 warehouses have been purchased in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah, with the federal government spending a combined $1.074 billion.

But lawsuits are pending in three of the states. Meanwhile, the capacity of at least one warehouse has been scaled back. Plans initially called for a warehouse in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise to be used as a 1,500-bed processing site, but Homeland Security now plans to cap occupied beds at 542, Surprise Mayor Kevin Sartor said during a news conference on Monday.

In many cases, mayors, county commissioners, governors and members of Congress learned about ICE’s ambitions only after the agency bought or leased space for detainees, leading to shock and frustration even in areas that have backed Trump.

The warehouse plan ran into challenges from the start. Eight deals were scuttled in places like Kansas City, Missouri, when owners decided not to sell.

Pressed on the lack of information during his confirmation hearing, Mullin acknowledged there had been issues.

“We’ve got to protect the homeland and we’re going to do that,” Mullin said. “But obviously we want to work with community leaders.”

Mullin, who took over and expanded his family’s plumbing business before representing Oklahoma in the U.S House and Senate, said that “one thing I do know is construction.”

He noted that most municipalities don’t have the capacity in their infrastructure for waste and water.

“So, it’s important that we’re talking to the communities and if we’re having additional needs, we can work with the cities,” he said at his confirmation hearing earlier this month.

Santana and Hollingsworth write for the Associated Press. Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Mo.

WASHINGTON — For several hours Friday, in the stillness before dawn, the Senate appeared to have finally figured out how to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security before it faced the longest partial shutdown in U.S. history.

Senators handed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) their deal and headed for the airports, seemingly confident of success.

Then it collapsed. Spectacularly.

An incensed Johnson marched out of his office Friday afternoon. He angrily denounced the plan that the Senate had unanimously agreed to as a “joke.”

“I have to protect the House, and I have to protect the American people,” Johnson told reporters.

It was a dramatic denunciation of a deal that his counterpart, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), had negotiated after weeks of effort, and was the latest abrupt turn in a funding saga that has bedeviled top Republicans for much of the year.

The collapse of the deal leaves Congress, now on a two-week spring break, with no easy way out of the impasse that has put the Homeland Security Department into a shutdown since mid-February. It also has exposed a rare rupture between the two Republican leaders in Congress, testing their alliances as they labor to move another set of President Trump’s priorities into law before the November elections.

Nothing ahead is likely to be easy.

How the deal collapsed

Thune had a deal with Democratic senators after negotiating for weeks on their demands for new restrictions on the department’s immigration enforcement work. Offers were traded several times. The talks moved along at a stop-start pace. Votes failed again and again.

Out of time and patience, senators essentially settled on a draw for the bill: They would not include funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for U.S. Border Patrol, as Democrats had proposed repeatedly in the last week, but while setting aside all the Democratic demands for new limits on the agencies.

Thune pointed out that Congress had allotted money for immigration enforcement and he told reporters that “we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again and then we’ll go from there.”

Asked if he had cleared the compromise with Johnson, Thune said the two had texted.

“I don’t know what the House will do,” the senator said early Friday as the deal came together.

But as House Republicans woke up to the news, their outrage was swift.

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said that on a GOP conference call that morning to discuss their path forward, a few dozen members ranging from moderates to hard-line conservatives spoke in opposition to what the Senate had done.

“The Senate chickened out,” he said. “The cowards there, only a few of them in the middle of the night with I think only three to five senators present on the floor, chickened out because they wanted to go home for two weeks. We need to raise the bar.”

What’s next for Republicans?

The bitter split threatens to make the job for Republican leaders more difficult as they try to advance their priorities while they still have guaranteed control of both chambers. Trump has said that legislation to impose strict new proof of citizenship requirements on voting is his top priority, but there is no real path for that plan in the Senate with its 60-vote threshold for advancing legislation.

Some Republicans have pushed instead for a budget package that could potentially put some parts of the voting law in place. Republicans are also contemplating how to pass an expected request from the White House to fund the war with Iran that could total more than $200 billion, among other priorities.

Meanwhile, the flop of the funding deal has given Democrats another chance to pin the partial shutdown on House Republicans.

“They know this is a continuation of the shutdown because the Senate is gone,” said Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark, the No. 2 Democratic leader. “So they know fully well what they’re doing.”

It is not clear what the Senate will do next. A quick resumption of talks is unlikely. Negotiations ended acrimoniously on both sides, with each blaming the other as moving the goalposts along the way.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said he was proud of his caucus for “holding the line.” But Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who leads the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Democrats were “intransigent and unreasonable.”

Thune said he believed that Democrats never wanted a deal and would not vote for ICE funding under any circumstances.

“I felt like from the beginning, they just didn’t want to get to ‘yes,’” Thune said after the vote.

The dynamic left senators convinced that the deal was the only way to move past their disagreements and reopen the Homeland Security Department.

But House Republicans on Friday night seemed to revel in the fact they had defied the wishes of the Senate. GOP members said that they work from a perspective that is closer to the will of their constituents.

To Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the Senate’s proposal was “nothing more than unconditional surrender masquerading as a solution.” She said the House ”will not bend itself into submission by acquiescing.”

Those searching for a way out of the shutdown seemed discouraged.

“This takes two chambers to get the job done,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican. “Apparently, there’s not enough communication between those chambers.”

Groves, Jalonick and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. AP writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Senate early Friday morning approved Homeland Security funds to pay Transportation Security Administration agents and most other agencies, but not the immigration enforcement operations at the heart of the budget impasse that has jammed airports, disrupted travel and imposed financial hardship on workers.

The deal, which the Senate approved unanimously without a roll call, next goes to the House, which is expected to consider it Friday.

“We can get at least a lot of the government opened up again and then we’ll go from there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. “Obviously, we’ll still have some work ahead of us.”

With pressure mounting to resolve the 42-day stalemate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the endgame emerged in the final hours before TSA workers miss another paycheck Friday. President Donald Trump said he would sign an order to immediately pay the TSA agents, saying he wanted to quickly stop the “Chaos at the Airports.” The deal did not include any of the restraints Democrats have demanded as they sought to rein in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the outcome could have been reached weeks ago, and vowed that his party would continue fighting to ensure Trump’s “rogue” immigration operation “does not get more funding without serious reform.”

What’s in and out of the funding package

Senators worked through the night on the deal that would fund much of the rest of the department, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and TSA, but without funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Customs was funded, but Border Protection was not.

The package puts no new limits on immigration enforcement, which has remained largely uninterrupted by the shutdown. The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions in extra funds to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the immigration officers are still being paid despite the lapse.

Next steps in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., holds a slim majority, are uncertain. Passage will almost certainly require bipartisan support, as lawmakers on the left and right flanks revolt.

Conservative Republicans have panned their own party’s proposals, demanding full funding for immigration operations. Many have vowed to ensure ICE has the resources it needs in the next budget package to carry out Trump’s agenda.

“We will fully fund ICE. That is what this fight is about,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said as he tried to offer legislation to fund the agency. “The border is closing. The next task is deportation.”

On-again, off-again talks collapsed

Earlier Thursday, Thune announced he had given a “last and final” offer to the Democrats. But as the day dragged on, action stalled out.

Democrats argued the GOP proposals have not gone far enough at putting guardrails on officers from ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and other federal agencies who are engaged in the immigration sweeps, particularly after the deaths of two Americans protesting the actions in Minneapolis.

They want federal agents to wear identification, remove their face masks and refrain from conducting raids around schools, churches or other sensitive places. Democrats have also pushed for an end of administrative warrants, insisting that judges sign off before agents search people’s homes or private spaces — something new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said he is open to considering.

Trump had largely left the issue to Congress, but warned he was ready to take action, threatening to send the National Guard to airports in addition to his deployment of ICE agents who are now checking travelers’ IDs.

The White House had floated the extraordinary move of invoking a national emergency to pay the TSA agents, a politically and legally fraught approach. Instead, Trump’s order would pay TSA agents using money from his 2025 tax bill, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.

If the Senate package is approved by the House and signed it into law, the action Trump announced to pay TSA agents may be temporary or unneeded.

Airport lines grow as TSA workers endure hardships

The funding shutdown has resulted in travel delays and even warnings of airport closures as TSA workers missing paychecks stop coming to work.

Multiple airports are experiencing greater than 40% callout rates of TSA workers and nearly 500 of the agency’s nearly 50,000 transportation security officers have quit during the shutdown. Nationwide on Wednesday, more than 11% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, according to DHS. That is more than 3,120 callouts.

Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union is grateful the TSA workers will be paid, but said Congress must stay in session to pass a deal “that funds DHS, pays all DHS workers, and keeps these vital agencies running.”

At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Melissa Gates said she would not make her flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after waiting more than 2½ hours and still not reaching the security checkpoint. She said no other flights were available until Friday.

“I should have just driven, right?” Gates said. “Five hours would have been hilarious next to this.”

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Kevin Freking, Rebecca Santana, Collin Binkley and Ben Finley in Washington, Lekan Oyekanmi in Houston, Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Gabriela Aoun Angueira in San Diego contributed to this report.

Mascaro and Jalonick write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A lead attorney for the Department of Homeland Security suggested that federal agents should have “just started hitting the rioters and arresting everyone that couldn’t get away” during an anti-ICE protest in Los Angeles last June, internal emails show.

The note was in an email chain obtained by the nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act and shared exclusively with The Times.

In it, attorneys for Homeland Security appear to be discussing the June 9 lawsuit filed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom over President Trump’s deployment of thousands of California National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

Under the subject line “California DOD Lawsuit,” officials coordinated legal filings defending the Trump administration and included a draft declaration by the Los Angeles field office director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement supporting the deployment of military forces.

The final email in the thread was from Joseph Mazzara, then-acting DHS general counsel, and he appears to be referring to an incident in which protesters tried to breach a protective line at a federal building.

On June 11, he wrote: “Every time I read about the battering ram incident I’m just floored at how wild that is.”

Referring to law enforcement as “they,” he continued: “They should have, when they brought the line in, just started hitting the rioters and arresting everyone that couldn’t get away from them. No one likes being hit by a stick, and people tend to run when that starts happening in earnest.”

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mazzara was later appointed deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Politico reported that Mazzara is among 10 staffers who followed former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to the State Department after she was fired this month from DHS and given a new role as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas.

The battering ram incident Mazzara referred to is detailed in court documents for the lawsuit.

A June 19 order from a panel judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals states that Trump administration attorneys presented evidence of protesters interfering with federal officers. The protesters threw objects at ICE vehicles, “pinned down” several Federal Protective Service officers and threw “concrete chunks, bottles of liquid, and other objects,” the order said.

Protesters also “used ‘large rolling commercial dumpsters as a battering ram’ in an attempt to breach the parking garage of a federal building,” the order states.

Mazzara’s comment in the email thread with other Homeland Security attorneys was given to American Oversight with a watermark showing the agency had intended to withhold it. American Oversight also received a version of the documents with that statement redacted.

Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said it’s no wonder the administration wanted to keep Mazzara’s comments hidden.

“They reveal a level of hostility toward protesters that is deeply at odds with the government’s obligation to protect civil liberties — and there’s no FOIA exemption that justifies hiding them,” she said.

Kerry Doyle, the former top ICE attorney during the Biden administration, said Mazzara’s comments show a shocking carelessness about the potential for harm against both the general public and the officers he was employed to protect.

The email, she said, “seems to encourage, or, at the very least, support constitutional violations by the operators that are supposed to be getting legal counsel from him to avoid violating the law.” Plus, commenting on operational strategy is outside the scope of his responsibilities, she said.

“He’s doing a disservice to the people that are on the front line, that rely on him and his colleagues to give them the parameters of what they can and can’t do,” Doyle added. “If you give them bad legal advice, you are setting them up for liability.”

Noem’s removal came amid backlash against an escalation of violence during Trump’s crackdown on immigration, including the shooting deaths of U.S. citizen protesters by immigration agents.

Doyle said part of the secretary’s job is to set the tone for the agency so the rank and file know what is expected of them. Mazzara’s comments, she said, show how that tone has permeated all facets of the agency.

After the U.S. Supreme Court cast doubt on the Trump administration’s legal theory for using troops in domestic law enforcement operations, the president in December began removing the National Guard from Los Angeles and other Democratic-led cities.

The protests last summer caused significant property damage in a small section of downtown Los Angeles. But grand juries refused to indict many demonstrators accused by federal prosecutors of attacking agents, and a Times review of alleged assaults found that most incidents resulted in no injuries.

March 26 (UPI) — Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security after they could not reach terms on a bill 41 days into its shutdown.

A bill to fund all of DHS failed in the Senate for the seventh time, once again along a mostly party line vote, 53 to 47, as the Senate is expected to leave for a two-week recess that includes several members traveling outside the country, The Hill reported.

The is not expected to reconvene until April 13, but the GOP has not ruled out delaying, shortening or canceling the recess.

With the lack of action from Congress, President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he plans to declare a national emergency forcing DHS to pay TSA employees.

“I am going to sign an Order instructing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Senate Republican majority leader John Thune, R-S.D., who’d earlier called the GOP’s latest plan “our last and final offer,” told reporters on Thursday night the executive order would temporarily relieve “the immediate pressure” on the Senate to solve the situation.

Senators actively negotiated Thursday on the DHS shutdown ahead of Friday’s deadline, which is the start of a two-week Easter recess.

Thune, also, however, kept a procedural vote open on the Senate floor to prevent requests for unanimous consent to fund only TSA as the rest of the funding bill gets worked out.

“Let’s let the Dems react to what’s out there, and hopefully we can find a pathway to drive this to the finish,” CBS News reported Thune said.

He didn’t share details of the plan, but said it’s close to what they offered earlier this week, which Democrats voted down because it didn’t create reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Though recess is scheduled to start this weekend, if the Senate doesn’t agree on a funding bill, Thune said, “I suspect we’ll probably be around here.”

Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said Democrats were looking at the offer, but he doesn’t think it’s enough.

“We’re talking through it right now but it’s not where we want it to be,” Kim said. “We just continue to be stuck here.”

He didn’t give details about the offer, but said, “it’s not good enough for me.”

Thune later walked back his “final offer” statement, saying that the GOP senators are willing to work with Democrats to tweak the bill.

“If there’s something that they think needs to be tweaked, one way or the other, as long as that’s a final thing, then we’ll see if it can get done,” Thune said.

“At some point they got to take yes for an answer,” Thune said.

The department has been shut down since Feb. 14 as Democrats and Republicans battle over a funding bill. Democrats don’t want to fund the department without putting some restrictions on ICE enforcement, and Republicans have agreed to some measures but not the ones on which Democrats insist.

Because of this, Transportation Security Administration workers have been working without pay for more than a month. Some are quitting or taking days off work, creating long lines at airports. Trump has sent ICE agents to some airports to help TSA agents.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., told reporters this morning that talks have increased.

“We put options in front of the Democrats, and they just need to quit backing up on us and vote to get DHS funded and TSA agents paid,” CBS reported Hoeven said.

“I’m hoping that as we get to the end of this week — you know how it works around here with deadlines — that that’s going to get us to a point where we get it done,” he said. “But we’re still working.”

Thursday morning, President Donald Trump began a Cabinet meeting by saying that Democrats are “really punishing the American people.”

“They need to end the shutdown immediately, or we’ll have to take some very drastic measures,” he said. He didn’t explain what he meant.

The only Democrat who has voted for the Republican bill was Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. Some Democrats fear that other centrists will defect and vote for the Republican bill, The Hill reported.

Some who voted to reopen the government last fall met with White House border czar Tom Homan last week, including Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.; Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.; and Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with Democrats. So far, they haven’t broken with the Democrats, but there is anxiety that they will, The Hill reported.

March 23 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Sunday said there will be no end to the partial government shutdown until Congress passes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.

“I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass ‘THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,'” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] funding, a deal which, even when disguised as something else, is unacceptable to me and the American people – UNLESS it includes their approval of Voter I.D., (with picture!), Citizenship to Vote, No Mail-In Voting (with exceptions), All Paper Ballots, No Men In Women’s Sports, and No Transgender MUTILIZATION of our precious children,” he added.

Trump also wrote that Thune should “clearly identify” the Republicans who are not supporting the bill and said they were, “Voting against AMERICA.”

“They will never be elected again! In other words, lump everything together as one, and VOTE!!! Kill the Filibuster, and stay in D.C. for Easter, if necessary,” he said.

Lawmakers have not supported abandoning the supermajority needed to end debate.

The DHS, which includes the Transportation Security Administration, shut down on Feb. 14 because Congress couldn’t agree on a funding bill for the department. Democrats don’t want to fund it until guardrails are put on the agency, and Republicans haven’t agreed to Democrats’ demands.

Because of this, TSA workers have been working without pay for more than a month. Some are quitting or taking days off work, creating long lines at airports.

Congress is scheduled to leave Washington in a few days for a recess. If there’s no deal, the partial shutdown could last two months. It would be the longest shutdown of a federal agency.

The Senate is considering staying in session to resolve the shutdown, but House Republicans say they won’t change plans, Politico reported that three anonymous sources said.

The House will likely vote again Thursday.

Trump told NewsNation Sunday that Democrats were going to fold after he said he would send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to help TSA agents.

But Sen. Lisa Murkowsky, R-Alaska, doesn’t agree that plan is appropriate.

“This is not the answer for what we need to do. We need to figure out how we get DHS funded. My preference, of course, is to get all of DHS funded, get it done and behind us. But I think we all need to be looking to see if there are any [other] avenues that can gain support. We got to figure it out before [the end of] next week,” The Hill reported she said.

March 23 (UPI) — Senate Republicans have advanced the nomination of Sen. Markwayne Mullin for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, paving the way for his confirmation as early as Monday evening.

The Senate voted 54-37 Sunday afternoon to invoke cloture, clearing a procedural hurdle permitting a final vote on his confirmation.

The vote was mostly along party lines, with Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico joining their Republican colleagues in approving the motion.

Nine lawmakers, including eight Democrats, did not vote, including GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who has been vocally opposed to Mullin’s confirmation.

Paul was the only Republican to vote against the Oklahoma senator when his committee voted last week to advance his nomination to the full Senate.

The Senate is expected to vote on his confirmation Monday night.

President Donald Trump nominated Mullin after firing Kristi Noem following months of controversy over her leadership of the department, especially after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis and a $220 million advertising contract.

Fetterman was among those who called for Noem’s firing, and said he was supportive of Mullin to lead the DHS.

He has said he approached Mullin’s confirmation “with an open mind.”

“My AYE is rooted in a strong committed, constructive working relationship with Senator Mullin for our nation’s security,” he said.

Following Sunday’s vote, Heinrich issued a statement, similarly addressing the Oklahoma senator as “a friend” with whom he shares “a very honest and constructive working relationship.”

“We often disagree and when we do, we work to find whatever common ground we share,” he said.

“I have also seen first-hand that Markwayne is not someone who can simply be bullied into changing his views, and I look forward to having a secretary who doesn’t take their orders from Stephen Miller.”

Miller is Trump’s far-right Homeland Security adviser.

Mullin is likely to be confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate, despite opposition from Paul, who voted against him during last week’s committee hearing and did not vote on Sunday.

Paul confronted Mullin during the committee hearing over reportedly calling him “a freaking snake.” He also accused Mullin of lying when he told a reporter he had told Paul that he “completely” understood why a man had attacked him in late 2017, breaking five of his ribs.

“You got a chance today. You can either continue to lie or you can correct the record,” Paul said in his opening statement.

“You have never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me that the assault was justified, so today, you’ll have your chance.”

When it was Mullin’s turn to give his opening statement he began by addressing Paul’s comments, stating that he had made the remarks while Paul was in the same room and that it was due to his behavior of seemingly going against hardline Republican policies.

“As far as my terms of a snake in the grass, I worked to try to fix problems. I’ve worked with many people in this room. It seems like you fight Republicans more than you work with us.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration likes to promote its immigration enforcement agenda through numbers, with ambitious goals to deport 1 million people, report zero releases at the U.S.-Mexico border and arrest thousands of alleged gang members.

For all the boasting, the administration has been releasing less reliable, carefully vetted data than its predecessors on a signature policy that has become one of the most contentious of Trump’s second term.

The gap in information and a loss of figures from an office that has tracked immigration data back to the 1800s have left researchers, advocates, lawyers and journalists without important statistics to hold the Republican administration to account.

“They aren’t publishing the data,” said Mike Howell, who heads the conservative Oversight Project, an advocacy group pushing for more deportations. Instead, Howell said, the Department of Homeland Security has put out numbers in news releases “that purport to be statistics with no statistical backup and the numbers have jumped all over the place.”

With mass deportations a priority, new restrictions and increased enforcement have led to a surge in immigration arrests, detentions and deportations.

But finding the metrics that once measured those changes can be hard. It is an extension of earlier administration moves to limit the flow of government information by scrubbing or removing federal datasets or by the firing last year of the top official overseeing jobs data.

Important data is no longer publicly available

The Office of Homeland Security Statistics is responsible for publishing figures from Homeland Security agencies, including removals and the nationalities of those deported, to provide a comprehensive picture of immigration trends at the border and inside the United States.

Originally known as the Office of Immigration Statistics, it tracked such data since 1872. In its current form, created under the Biden administration, it also started publishing monthly reports that allowed researchers to track developments almost in real time.

But key enforcement metrics on its website have not been updated since early last year. A note on the page where the monthly reports were says it “is delayed while it is under review.”

“It’s the most timely data. It’s the most reliable data,” Austin Kocher, research professor at Syracuse University who closely follows immigration data trends, said about the monthly reports. “It has the most omniscient view of immigration enforcement across the entire agency.”

An interactive dashboard launched by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in December 2023 once let users examine whom the agency was arresting, their nationalities, criminal histories and removal numbers. ICE called it a “new era in transparency.”

Though intended for quarterly updates, the latest data is from January 2025. The agency’s annual report, typically released in December, had not been published as of mid-March.

Other agencies also publish data that touches on immigration, and parts of it do continue to roll out, such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics detailing border encounters or data from the Department of Justice’s immigration courts.

But experts say other data has slowed.

The State Department’s most recent visa issuance data is from August. Key statistics from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have not been updated since October.

The now-missing data had helped researchers study the effects of different policies. Lawyers could cite the figures to support their litigation. Journalists saw in them a powerful tool to hold the government to account on public claims or to report on important trends.

“We’re all a little bit in the dark about exactly how immigration enforcement is operating at a time when it’s taking new and unprecedented forms,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.

DHS did not respond to detailed questions about why it was no longer releasing specific data.

“This is the most transparent Administration in history, we release new data multiple times a week and upon reporter request,” the department said in a statement.

Researchers contend with a patchwork of numbers

Figures the administration has released are inconsistent and unverifiable.

In a Jan. 20 news release, DHS said it had deported more than 675,000 people since Trump returned to the White House. A day later, in a second release, the department put the figure at 622,000. In congressional testimony March 4, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the figure was 700,000.

But ICE, an agency within DHS, also releases figures on how many people it has removed from the country, part of a large data release mandated by Congress. An Associated Press analysis of the figures put that number at roughly 400,000 over Trump’s first year.

DHS has said 2.2 million people who were in the U.S. illegally have gone home on their own, but the department has given no explanation for the count. Experts have questioned the source of that figure, saying this was not something that DHS historically has tracked.

The department did not respond to questions about where that data came from.

With key sources of data halted, researchers, advocates and others have had to rely on information the administration is obliged to report or that has come to light through legal action.

The publication of ICE detention figures — how many people are detained, for how long and whether they have committed a crime — is required by Congress and is generally released every two weeks. But the figures’ release has faced some delays and its data gets overwritten with every new publication, complicating the work of people who need access to it.

The University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project, a research initiative, successfully sued through the Freedom of Information Act to access data about ICE arrests including nationalities, conviction status and whether arrests occurred at jails or in the community.

Graeme Blair, co-director of the project, said every administration has struggled with transparency in immigration enforcement, and given the Trump administration’s ambitious enforcement goals, the team wanted to secure and verify information that the government might not publicly release.

“Given the scale of what they were talking about doing, it seemed really important to be able to understand, to be able to double check those numbers,” he said.

But there are limitations, he said. The data obtained through the lawsuit only runs through Oct. 15. It does not cover recent operations such as the Minneapolis enforcement surge, when federal immigration officers fatally shot two protesters, leading to widespread demonstrations and scrutiny of enforcement tactics.

The absence of data is one of the few issues that has drawn bipartisan criticism.

“We deserve to know the numbers, just like we deserve to know who’s in our country and who needs to leave,” Howell said.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.