Associated Press February
10, 2019
Senators
on the left and right are leery of another government shutdown.
WASHINGTON
(AP) — As the White House refused to rule out the possibility that the federal
government may shut down again, negotiators clashed over whether to limit the
number of migrants authorities can detain, creating a new hurdle for a border
security compromise Congress can accept.
With a
Friday deadline approaching, the two sides remained separated over how much to
spend on President Donald Trump's promised border wall. But rising to the fore
on Sunday was a related dispute over curbing Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, or ICE, the federal agency that Republicans see as an emblem of
tough immigration policies and Democrats accuse of often going too far.
The
fight over ICE detentions goes to the core of each party's view on immigration.
Republicans favor rigid enforcement of immigration laws and have little
interest in easing them if Democrats refuse to fund the Mexican border wall.
Democrats despise the proposed wall and, in return for border security funds,
want to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by ICE.
People
involved in the talks say Democrats have proposed limiting the number of immigrants
here illegally who are caught inside the U.S. — not at the border — that the
agency can detain. Republicans say they don't want that cap to apply to
immigrants caught committing crimes, but Democrats do.
Democrats
say they proposed their cap to force ICE to concentrate its internal
enforcement efforts on dangerous immigrants, not those who lack legal authority
to be in the country but are productive and otherwise pose no threat. Democrats
have proposed reducing the current number of beds ICE uses to detain immigrants
here illegally from 40,520 to 35,520.
But
within that limit, they've also proposed limiting to 16,500 the number for
immigrants here illegally caught within the U.S., including criminals.
Republicans want no caps on the number of immigrants who've committed crimes
who can be held by ICE.
Trump
used the dispute to cast Democrats as soft on criminals.
"I
don't think the Dems on the Border Committee are being allowed by their leaders
to make a deal. They are offering very little money for the desperately needed
Border Wall & now, out of the blue, want a cap on convicted violent felons
to be held in detention!" Trump tweeted Sunday.
Acting
White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, in appearances on NBC's "Meet
the Press" and "Fox News Sunday," said "you absolutely
cannot" eliminate the possibility of another shutdown if a deal is not
reached over the wall and other border matters. The White House had asked for
$5.7 billion, a figure rejected by the Democratic-controlled House, and the
mood among bargainers has soured, according to people familiar with the
negotiations not authorized to speak publicly about private talks.
"You
cannot take a shutdown off the table, and you cannot take $5.7 (billion) off
the table," Mulvaney told NBC, "but if you end up someplace in the
middle, yeah, then what you probably see is the president say, 'Yeah, OK, and
I'll go find the money someplace else.'"
A
congressional deal seemed to stall even after Mulvaney convened a bipartisan
group of lawmakers at Camp David, the presidential retreat in northern
Maryland. While the two sides appeared close to clinching a deal late last
week, significant gaps remain and momentum appears to have slowed. Though
congressional Democratic aides asserted that the dispute had caused the talks
to break off, it was initially unclear how damaging the rift was. Both sides
are eager to resolve the long-running battle and avert a fresh closure of
dozens of federal agencies that would begin next weekend if Congress doesn't
act by Friday.
"I
think talks are stalled right now," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said on
"Fox News Sunday." ''I'm not confident we're going to get
there."
Sen.
Jon Tester, D-Mont., who appeared on the same program, agreed: "We are not
to the point where we can announce a deal."
But
Mulvaney did signal that the White House would prefer not to have a repeat of
the last shutdown, which stretched more than a month, left more than 800,000
government workers without paychecks, forced a postponement of the State of the
Union address and sent Trump's poll numbers tumbling. As support in his own
party began to splinter, Trump surrendered after the shutdown hit 35 days
without getting money for the wall.
The
president's supporters have suggested that Trump could use executive powers to
divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, though it was
unclear if he would face challenges in Congress or the courts. One provision of
the law lets the Defense Department provide support for counterdrug activities.
But
declaring a national emergency remained an option, Mulvaney said, even though
many in the administration have cooled on the prospect. A number of powerful
Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have also
warned against the move, believing it usurps power from Congress and could set
a precedent for a future Democratic president to declare an emergency for a
liberal political cause.
As most
budget disputes go, differences over hundreds of millions of dollars are
usually imperceptible and easily solved. But this battle more than most is
driven by political symbolism — whether Trump will be able to claim he
delivered on his long-running pledge to "build the wall" or newly
empowered congressional Democrats' ability to thwart him.
Predictably
each side blamed the other for the stall in negotiations.
"We
were, you know, progressing well," Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., said Sunday on
ABC's "This Week." ''I thought we were tracking pretty good over the
last week. And it just seems over the last 24 hours or so the goalposts have
been moving from the Democrats."
House
Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky., countered by saying on the same
show, "The numbers are all over the place."
"I
think the big problem here is this has become pretty much an ego negotiation,"
Yarmuth added. "And this really isn't over substance."
Associated
Press writers Hope Yen, Andrew Taylor and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Julie
Walker in New York contributed to this report.
Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire and Fram at http://twitter.com/@asfram
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