There was chaos at airports across the country last weekend, with thousands of passengers waiting in hours-long security lines reportedly due to staff shortages. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Coast Guard workers have turned to food banks for assistance after going without pay for weeks. But amid the Department of Homeland Security’s mass arrests and partial government shutdown aimed at reducing deportations, federal agents are continuing their anti-immigrant crackdown unabated — and for now, there’s not much anyone can do.
DHS has been operating without funding for four weeks due to a standoff over immigration enforcement. Congressional Democrats say the lapse will continue unless the White House agrees to a series of changes to ICE and CBP. But while large parts of DHS are affected, ICE and CBP still have plenty of money. Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which passed by the slimmest of margins despite universal Democratic opposition, gave agencies a combined $170 billion for immigration enforcement through 2029. The majority of this money went to ICE, which received $45 billion to build new detention centers and $30 billion to hire and train personnel. Appropriations currently being debated would provide additional funding to ICE in addition to this $75 billion. This type of multi-year funding is unusual, and it protects agencies from political pressure.
Relying on OBBBA funds, ICE has continued to arrest immigrants — including a Nashville-based journalist who frequently reports on the agency, who has pending asylum claims — and detain them in substandard facilities. Despite the shutdown, Customs and Border Protection continues to look for additional locations for its “smart wall” along the US-Mexico border, and briefly considered building a barrier through Big Bend National Park in Texas. (The agency has since canceled the plan, possibly due to local opposition.) Most DHS employees, including TSA officers and CBP agents, are currently working without pay, although they will receive back pay when funding resumes.
Democrats are seeking several compromises to refund DHS for this fiscal year. He has called for “targeted enforcement” rather than patrols, an end to racial profiling, a “reasonable use of force policy”, and expanded training for officers. Democratic lawmakers, who have compared plainclothes officers at ICE and CBP to “paramilitary police,” want DHS to ban masks and standardize uniforms for agents in the field. He also requested that officers wear body cameras, as well as IDs displaying their agency, last name and unique officer number.
“These are common-sense reforms that Americans know and expect from law enforcement,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a press conference in January. So far, these requests have gone nowhere.
During the last 43-day funding lapse, ICE deported an estimated 56,000 people and detained nearly 65,000 people during the same time frame.
Democrats have scored a high-profile victory in the fight: Trump fired DHS Secretary Kristi Noem last Thursday ahead of a House vote to defund DHS. But most Democrats are not satisfied with Noem’s removal. “The problems at this agency go far beyond any one individual,” Schumer said at a news conference after last Thursday’s vote. “The rot runs deep. The President must end the violence and rein in ICE.” After his dismissal, the House passed the appropriations bill, but Senate Democrats did not budge.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, “It’s not like Kristi Noem was involved in any conversations.” It has long been understood that Trump adviser Stephen Miller runs the show at DHS, no matter who is secretary. “We’ve been working with the White House before and we’ll continue to work with the White House at this point,” Jefferies said.
The administration has no reason to accede to the Democrats’ demands. The White House and congressional Republicans have blamed “radical left Democrats” for the shutdown, claiming that refusing to fund DHS is putting Americans at risk. While essential federal employees continue to work during the shutdown — in some cases without pay — Republicans have warned that a lack of funding in light of the Trump administration’s recent invasion of Iran could prevent DHS from responding to “threats against our homeland.” Even if individual officers go without pay, the unprecedented funding ICE and CBP received from the OBBA means the agencies can continue to operate.
Last year’s government shutdown provides insight into the operations of ICE and CBP. During the last 43-day funding lapse, ICE deported an estimated 56,000 people and detained nearly 65,000 people during the same time frame. But because its operations were funded by OBBA appropriations, ICE claimed in court filings, the agency was not required to grant access to Democratic lawmakers who sought to monitor conditions in federal detention centers as part of their oversight duties.
The effects of the shutdown are not evenly distributed among the various component agencies of DHS. Ironically, since Congress created DHS in response to the September 11 attacks, the agency that has experienced the most disruption so far is TSA. Agents received about 30 percent of their pay last week, but will not be paid again until DHS is defunded. Times. Ports of entry, including airports, are still mostly operational. Although DHS initially claimed that TSA PreCheck would be suspended amid the shutdown, the program is currently running at most airports. Global entry, which is controlled by CBP, is largely suspended.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that handles naturalization, green card and other benefit applications, remains operational. Unlike other DHS agencies, USCIS is almost entirely fee-funded, meaning it is largely unaffected by the federal funding debate. Immigration courts also remain open, as the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the federal agency that oversees the immigration court system, is under the purview of the Justice Department.
However, some DHS employees are out of work amid the shutdown. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said on Sunday that Democrats want to separately fund most of the DHS component agencies, including the TSA, the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
About 15 percent of FEMA employees are currently furloughed, while the remaining 85 percent are expected to work without pay. new York Times FEMA’s disaster relief fund is reported to be equipped to handle “current and anticipated” emergency response activities. Its response to a major disaster, however, “will be severely strained,” Greg Phillips, associate administrator of the agency’s Office of Response and Recovery, said in federal testimony last week.
About two-thirds of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s staff have been furloughed. Many of the 888 employees the agency has deemed “essential to protect life and property” have had to work without pay.
“Let’s just pass those funding bills,” Kaine said. Let’s limit the ICE and CBP reform discussion to just those two agencies and defund the others. So far, Republicans have blocked those efforts.
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