Transcript of The Government Shutdown Fight Over Immigration

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Later tonight, the US government will find itself in yet another shutdown, this time of only one agency, the Department of Homeland Security. Today, Congressional reporter Michael Gold on why Democrats are once again picking a fight over funding with the President. It's Friday, February 13th. Michael, thank you for making time for us on a busy day where I know we just grabbed you inside the US Capitol.

Yeah, a lot happening here on the Hill today, I would say.

Well, I appreciate you making time for us. As of this moment, at around 3: 45 PM on Thursday afternoon, it sure It looks like we are headed for another government shutdown, but this one has a very unique twist to it.

That's right, Michael. At this point, it looks like at 12: 01 AM on Saturday morning, the Department of Homeland Security is going to shut down. It's the only government department that we expect will shut down this time.

A single agency shutdown.

A one agency shutdown, and that department is about 4% of US government spending. If you think about the shutdown we had last year as a full government shutdown and the brief one we had earlier this month as a partial government shutdown, this is a very fractional government shutdown.

A fractional government shutdown, right. As you're hinting at, government shutdowns have become the norm, but even within that weird new norm, this one is quite unique. Tell us the story of how we get to a single agency fractional shutdown.

For the last few months, Congress has really been working hard to pass all of its funding bills. This is something that Republicans, when they took control of both the House and Senate, set as a major priority. They wanted to pass funding bills. They wanted to pass individual funding bills, not one big package, and really hash out policy details for every government department.

The argument was that that creates more transparency if you have multiple bills, funding the government versus one vast impenetrable bill.

That's right. A lot of members of Congress had complained that they had constantly been stuck voting for these big packages, but they never really got to haggle on the of what went into those bills. They've been working for months to find agreements, Republicans and Democrats, occasionally the White House, coming together to try to find a way that they could fund the government one department at a time. They were putting together bills that cleared the House and Senate. They were really working together to try to find compromises on things. It seemed like everything was on track until last month when Renee Good was shot and killed by an immigration agent in Minneapolis. That's when Democrats Democrats realize that they're on the verge of passing a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and the Border Patrol. Democrats start to talk about how they can get serious changes to that bill that would impose some restrictions on the federal immigration operations and the deportation crackdown. They go back to the negotiating table with the White House and with the Republicans, and they come up with a compromise bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security that includes things like $20 million for body cameras and requirements that officers get enhanced training about use of force and de-escalation techniques.

Got it. Democrats extract some changes to the way that immigration officials are going to be operating in places like Minneapolis. They seem modest, but they're there.

Right. They know they didn't get everything they wanted, but they feel like this is a pretty good compromise. They're very committed to going through the regular funding process, and they say, This is as good as we can get, and it's better to have some restrictions than no restrictions. Got you. That bill is making its way through Congress and hasn't yet cleared the Senate when federal immigration agents kill Alex Pretty in Minnesota. At that moment, the politics of this issue really changed for Democrats.

Right, because suddenly, these immigration officials have killed two American citizens in what clearly has emerged as a problematic pattern that everyone in the country can see for themselves.

That's right, Michael. The video of Alex Pretty shooting spreads very quickly and outrages Democrats. The party comes out almost unanimously to say that they will not back any new funding for ICE or other immigration agencies unless they can get serious new restrictions that prevent anything like this from happening to an American citizen ever again.

After Alex Freddie's death, what was a good enough compromise before is no longer good enough.

That's right. Ice and CBP have gotten out of control. We have seen with our own eyes how citizens and peaceful protests- You start to see striking statements from people It liked Senator Patty Murray, who is the top Democrat on the committee that negotiates funding bills, and who had said that she was going to support this bill that she had helped negotiate. But as soon as the Pretty shooting happens, she says, We need to go further and we need to do more. The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretty really shock the conscience. They demand action. They demand accountability and justice. Democrats are insisting that happens..

Enough is enough. What What ICE is doing outside the law is state-sanctioned thuggery, and it must stop.

You see Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, come out and say that he believes that this bill doesn't go far enough. I don't like shutdowns, but obviously this is important. You see a lot of Democrats who usually oppose shutdowns start to demand new conditions. It's not like we can't pass 96% of those budgets right now and then just work on the Homeland Security one, which we to address. Who say that they can't support a bill, even at the risk of a shutdown, if it doesn't impose serious new restrictions on ICE.

What are the new restrictions that these Democrats start to demand in order to ever agree to fund the Department of Homeland Security?

Democrats have a number of demands that they're making, but chief among them is a requirement that federal immigration officers visibly show their identification and that they can't be allowed to use to hide their identities from the public.

Both of those efforts would seem to very much be pointed at accountability, transparency. An agent's face is visible, an agent's name is visible. That's what they're really pushing for.

That's right. They're arguing that if you make officers be more public about their identities, it might have an impact on their conduct and make them think about how they're interacting with members of the public. This is something that Democrats have wanted throughout Trump's second term. They have been complaining about this. They've argued that it makes ICE equivalent to a secret police force. Now they see this as an opportunity to really demand some changes here.

How does the administration respond to that demand?

Republicans and the White House have pretty roundly rejected that as a nonstarter.

Why?

They say that ICE agents need to be able to protect their identities from the public because they're at risk of being doxed or otherwise harassed. They say that ICE agents are facing an unprecedented rise in threats and that this is how protecting themselves by hiding their identities, by shielding their faces from people who mean them harm. So both sides are entrenched in their positions, and these negotiations are at an impasse. And that brings us to this week, where the clock is ticking to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Lyons, do you consider yourself a religious man?

Yes, ma'am. Oh, yes.

Okay, well, how do you think Judgment Day will work for you with so much blood on your hands? I'm not going to entertain that question. Democrats are using every available opportunity to highlight just how flawed they think the immigration system is and the changes they want to see to ICE and the Border Patrol. This comes at hearings where they grill the heads of ICE and border protection. Mr. Lynes, will you apologize to the family of Renee Good for being called a domestic terrorist by the President and his leadership?

No, sir.

Why not? There's a hearing with Pam Bondi.

When they killed Mr. Pritty and Ms. Good, that was an execution, and you did not investigate it.

Where Democrats use that as an opportunity to grill her about Christie Noem and voice objections to their policies.

They were executed like Christie Noem executed her dog. That was wrong. You should investigate those people, and you should investigate- All the while, this debate is playing out on the House floor and on the Senate floor, and there's a real question of whether a deal can even be made, given how hardened everyone has become on these issues. Which I think brings us to Thursday afternoon and this all but assured shutdown, and the reality that Congressional Democrats at this point are no no longer just picking a fight over the budget and how DHS gets funded. They're making this much broader party-wide point about what they see as the excesses of immigration enforcement, its unaccountability, and their belief that they are the last line of defense in terms of doing something about it.

Yes, that's true. But that position really comes with a challenge for Democrats because as much as they're making this fight about immigration enforcement and raining in ICE and raining in the border protection agents. But there's a bigger challenge here. Even now that we're headed toward a shutdown and the funding is going to stop flowing to the Department of Homeland Security, that may not actually do much to stop ICE and Customs and Border Patrol from operating the way they've been operating. There are a host of other agencies that this money goes to, and there's a real risk that they might actually hurt services that many people have come to depend on that might have a broader impact. It's entirely possible that this strategy It would backfire for Democrats. We'll be right back.

Michael, just explain how and why taking away the Department of Homeland Security's funding isn't actually going to defund the agencies that the Democrats are most focused on, like ICE and Border Patrol.

Sure. You might remember last year, Republicans passed what they're calling their One Big Beautiful Bill. A lot of the attention on that bill was on tax policy and health care. But a major part of that bill was giving a huge amount of money to the Homeland Security Department for immigration enforcement. Republicans gave $75 billion to ICE and $45 billion to Customs and Border Protection, money that they were allowed to use for immigration enforcement efforts.

That's a lot of money.

It's a huge amount of money, and that money basically comes with no strings attached. The idea is that even with the shutdown, ICE and border protection can use that money to keep doing what they're doing, keep doing immigration rates, keep deportations up, and keep conducting this campaign.

The Trump administration expects that the funding from the one big, beautiful bill, as they call it, will somehow or other keep immigration enforcement officers paid, keep operations going. If defunding DHS isn't going to end up hurting agencies like ICE, what would defunding it actually end up defunding? Everything.

Well, like many government departments, there are a lot of agencies under this one. In this case, you're talking about agencies like FEMA, which is federal emergency management operations. You're talking about the TSA, who's screening passengers at the airport, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and SISA, which handles cybersecurity.

Pretty important agencies, and in the case of something like TSA and FEMA, when there's a crisis, highly visible ones.

That's right. During previous shutdowns, we've seen that these agencies will continue operating, but their employees have to work without pay. They cut a lot of services. That tends to be a pain point in any shutdown. If people have to wait in longer lines at airports, if the public's mad about that, the politics of these issues really start to change.

Then just explain how Democrats are talking about the logic of taking away the Department of Homeland Security's funding if that action doesn't take away the funding for the things that they want to defund, ICE, etc, and would take away funding from things that they probably want to keep funding.

I think it's important to point out that this is not a fight that Democrats necessarily wanted. But coming out of the shutdown last year, they felt like they really had a playbook for shutdowns like this that they can use on this particular moment.

Just explain that.

Yeah, so you have to remember, Democrats made the last shutdown entirely about health care, and they feel like that went really well for them. It's an issue where they traditionally poll very well with voters and where voters tend to trust them. They came out of the shutdown feeling being really confident that they had staked out a position on health care.

Right. The health care shutdown, as you're saying, is seen within the Democratic Party as a political victory and perhaps, therefore, a model for how to handle DHS funding. But it seems worth noting that that shutdown over health care didn't really get Democrats the policy changes that they wanted. They didn't get Republicans and the President to sign off on enhanced health care incentives. That didn't It happened, but it demonstrated the party's willingness to stand up to the President on a signature issue.

That's right. I think it really linked the idea of health care with Democrats, which is something that they want American voters to think. The Democrats are the party that cares about health care costs and that is working to do something to address them. I think you're going to see them try to make a similar message here that one party really wants to make sure that the Trump administration's crackdown doesn't go too far and that it follows the same standards that we hold other police to. Right now, polls are showing that voters are backing them. Voters have serious issues with what ICE is doing. They have serious issues with what happened in Minnesota. Democrats feel like even though there are some risks, the public right now really is on their side.

In that last shutdown over health care, it was the Democrats who started it and ended it when a few Democratic senators cave. They went around Chuck Schumer, and they worked with the President, Republicans to end the shutdown because they felt that the pain from it was becoming too big. They worried the public was going to be turning on them. Is that a risk here again for Democratic leaders that Democratic lawmakers lose their will?

I think it is, but things feel different, at least right now, this time. I think a lot of Democrats who yielded to strike that deal with Republicans know that a lot of attention is on them right now. I think that they're very aware that this is an issue that the Democratic base cares very deeply about. Right now, it doesn't seem like they're as likely to fold as they were last time around.

Let's turn to Congressional Republicans and to the President who no doubt have expected this partial DHS shutdown to happen. Once it officially gets underway, given the political realities and the resolve that you just described, what is their plan?

Senate Republicans in the White House do think there is room for a deal here. It might not be on masks, and it might not be an identification, but they do think there are areas where they could come together and find a compromise with Democrats.

What?

Well, one thing that Senate Republicans have been pointing to is this announcement by Tom Homan, who's the White House's borders are, that the Trump administration was going to wind down its surge of enforcement in Minneapolis.

Right, came just a few hours ago.

Just a few hours ago. Republicans on the Hill are saying that that shows that the White House is being responsive to Democrats concerns and that it's making it very clear that the White House does see some room to maneuver here. That makes Senate Republicans optimistic, but where exactly that lands us is pretty unclear.

Michael, there's a risk that we haven't talked about that I'd like to end our conversation on here for the Democrats, which is that President Trump finds a way to make the case to the public that Democrats are weak on illegal immigration. Democrats don't need to look very far in the past to see how effective that argument can be from the President. The entire 2024 presidential election seemed like an exercise in Democrats failing to meet the moment on immigration for lots of American voters. The act of trying to defund ICE, even if it doesn't end up defunding ICE, might make the case for the President and for the public that Democrats are out of sync with the country on illegal immigration and that they're against law enforcement. Is that something that we may end up seeing play out here and that would backfire on the Democrats in a way that perhaps will really make them regret this plan?

Well, I think Republicans are already trying to start that conversation. Throughout the discussions on this, they've argued that Democrats are not doing enough to rein in illegal immigration. But one thing I would point out is that Democrats are being very careful to make it clear that this is a conversation about the tactics being used by ICE, the tactics being used by Border Patrol agents, and the way they're interacting with American citizens. That's an area where they think they can win an advantage, even if immigration has traditionally been a difficult issue for them. But the question is whether voters will fully embrace the nuance that Democrats are trying to present. It's an election year, so we will find out by November whether this worked in Democrats' favor.

Michael, thank you very much.

Thanks for having me. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. This is a big one. If you're into environment, this is about as big as it gets, they tell me. On Thursday, President Trump rescinded the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment. In doing so, he gave up the government's authority to regulate greenhouse gasses that cause climate change. Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called Endangement Finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely-The historic move, the subject of yesterday's show represents a remarkable victory for a small group of conservative activists who have spent years trying to stop America's government-led transition away from fossil fuels toward cleaner forms of energy like solar and wind. And a federal judge has blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegset from punishing and demoting Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a retired US Navy captain for participating in a video that called on troops to disobey illegal orders. The judge ruled that the actions likely violated Kelly's First Amendment rights. It's the latest setback for a White House determined to punish lawmakers who challenged the President. This week, a grand jury in Washington also rejected the administration's unusual attempt to indict Kelly and the five other Democratic lawmakers who made the video.

Finally, a programming note. Tomorrow on the interview, my colleague, Lulo García-Navarro, sits down with Giselle Pelico. In 2024, Pelico's ex-husband was convicted of both drugging her and arranging for her rape by dozens of men during a trial in France that shocked the world.

The first time I walked into that courtroom when I discovered their faces, ages 22 to 70, it was really unbelievable to think, those people came into my bedroom. They came in there to rape me.

Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennis-Getter and Ricky Nowetzky. It was edited by Rob Zypko and Rachel Quester. Contains music by Marion Lozano and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Sunday.