MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The partial federal government shutdown has ended. The House voted 217-214 on Tuesday to fund most government offices through September.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Key word there is most. Congress has just nine days to finish negotiating the other thing - the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. Lawmakers seem far apart over how to change immigration enforcement after federal agents killed two Americans in Minnesota. Democrats are demanding changes. We'll speak with one of them in a few minutes, Representative Rosa DeLauro. We begin with the facts.
MARTIN: NPR immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo has been tracking all this and is with us now to bring us up to date. Good morning, Ximena.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, ICE, already got $75 billion from Congress last summer. So what's the difference between that and what Congress is trying to come up with after February 13?
BUSTILLO: So in this instance, we're talking about funding for all of DHS and not just ICE through the end of the fiscal year. So that 75 billion that you're talking about was in the One Big Beautiful Bill, and that was just for ICE. It made Immigration and Customs Enforcement the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency. Now, Congress still has to, by law, do what's called annual appropriations, and that's the baseline budget for each department that has to get renewed every year or we have these shutdowns.
MARTIN: OK. So this is for the whole department and not just one agency. And so that's why this is a big deal. OK. So body cameras keep coming up. Democrats want immigration officers to wear body cameras, but DHS Secretary Kristi Noem already said this week that every officer on the ground in Minneapolis specifically would be issued a body camera. So what's the issue they still need to negotiate?
BUSTILLO: Right. And keep in mind that that wouldn't necessarily happen overnight. It could take over 180 days to fully implement that just in Minneapolis. Noem also said that as funding is available, the body camera program would be expanded nationwide across the agency to all agents. But Democrats want more than just Noem's word for it. They want it written into law. And the current DHS budget bill negotiated by Congress does provide $20 million for body cameras, but Democrats want to mandate that they actually be used. And this is just one of the asks that has been discussed, and this one has gotten some bipartisan support, but other requests have been more contentious.
MARTIN: Like what?
BUSTILLO: Democrats want to mandate that immigration officers only use warrants signed by a judge to make arrests, for example. They say that the current use of administrative warrants, which are written by DHS itself and not signed by a judge, raises questions about violations to people's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizures. While some Republicans are interested in negotiating and talking about this, others, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, have poured cold water all over this. Democrats also want to ban officers from using face coverings, but Republicans are broadly opposed to this and say that it would make it easier for people to dox federal agents.
MARTIN: OK. So they have nine days. The clock is now ticking. I'm wondering if lawmakers really think they can get this done. What does your reporting suggest?
BUSTILLO: You know, many members are skeptical that less than two weeks is even enough time to come up with such a large compromise. If they can't get this done, they could risk a shutdown of just DHS, which puts at risk non-immigration parts of the agency like disaster response and TSA.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Ximena Bustillo. Ximena, thank you.
BUSTILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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