Senate Negotiates DHS Funding as Airport Lines Grow

Six weeks into a partial government shutdown, Senate negotiators spent Thursday trading proposals on Department of Homeland Security funding while airport security lines stretched longer and unpaid TSA officers continued calling out sick.

John Thune, the Senate’s Republican majority leader from South Dakota, told reporters Thursday afternoon that Democrats had not yet responded officially to a Republican offer sent over earlier in the day. He called it the “last and final” offer from his side and said GOP negotiators had done “everything we could to accommodate” Democratic language requests.

The urgency is visible at airports. Transportation Security Administration officers, who have been working without pay since the shutdown began nearly six weeks ago, are calling out at higher rates. The result is backed-up security lines at airports across the country, including Detroit Metro.

Chris Coons, the Democratic senator from Delaware, said Thursday that the paper moving between the two sides is a positive signal, but cautioned that the gap between parties remains significant.

“I think there’s a lot of sense of urgency around getting TSA funded,” Coons told reporters, pointing to the airport delays as pressure on both sides to reach a deal.

But the underlying dispute is about more than TSA paychecks.

Democrats have insisted on concrete reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection as a condition of any DHS funding deal. Republicans want to fund those agencies without additional statutory or regulatory reforms attached. That standoff has defined the shutdown negotiations since the beginning and, as of Thursday, showed no sign of fully breaking.

“Frankly, we’re not that far from where we’ve been for weeks,” Coons said. “Democrats want real reforms to ICE and CBP and are resistant to funding them without reforms, and Republicans would like us to fund them without reforms beyond what Secretary Noem committed to.”

The reference to “Secretary Noem” is already outdated. Kristi Noem was replaced earlier this week by former Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who was confirmed as the new DHS secretary in a move some Republicans have framed as a meaningful concession to Democratic concerns about the department’s direction.

Coons was blunt about how Democrats view that framing.

“My Republican friends on this topic have said, ‘Hey, Secretary Mullin in his confirmation committed to A, B, C, D,’” Coons said. “And that’s a far cry from, ‘We’ll put it in statute or we have promulgated this in regulation.’ So that’s some of the problems.”

In other words, Democrats don’t consider a new cabinet secretary’s verbal commitments during a confirmation hearing to be the same as enforceable law or formal regulation. Republicans have signaled they believe Mullin’s confirmation represents a genuine policy shift on immigration enforcement inside DHS. At least the Democratic senators Coons has spoken with don’t see it that way.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner described the dilemma his party faces in stark terms. Providing more CBP funding without guarantees about the agency’s scope of work risks, in Democrats’ view, continuing to fund an agency that has moved beyond what Congress authorized it to do.

“There is a conundrum over how to provide more funding for Customs and Border Protection without some agreement that they need to go back to their statutory role, not doing interior enforcement,” Warner said.

That dispute cuts to the heart of what Democrats have been fighting over since long before the shutdown began. Under the current administration, both CBP and ICE have expanded operations into what critics call interior enforcement territory. Democrats want any new DHS funding to come with guardrails that pull those agencies back to their legally defined functions. Republicans argue that kind of language would hamstring the administration’s ability to enforce immigration law.

President Donald Trump made clear Thursday that he wants a deal, though he offered no specifics about what he would or wouldn’t accept in the text of any agreement. Speaking during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said the shutdown needed to end immediately, and issued a warning about what might come if it doesn’t: he would take “very drastic measures,” though he did not elaborate on what those measures might include.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York had not commented publicly on the Republican offer as of late Thursday afternoon.

The timing adds pressure in both directions. Congressional recess is set to begin, which means lawmakers will scatter to their home districts if no deal materializes. Returning home without a DHS funding agreement, against the backdrop of visible airport chaos, is not a comfortable political position for members of either party. But recess has a way of letting negotiations cool, and any momentum built this week could dissipate quickly if senators leave Washington without a deal.

For Detroit, the stakes of a continued shutdown aren’t abstract. Detroit Metro Wayne County Airport runs on federal infrastructure. TSA officers staffing the terminals work without paychecks when DHS goes unfunded, and some have been doing exactly that for nearly six weeks. Michigan travelers flying in and out of DTW have already felt the effects. If the staffing situation deteriorates further, the delays will too.

The sticking points are structural, not cosmetic. Democrats want language they can point to in statute or regulation, not commitments made under oath during a Senate confirmation that the next secretary could walk back with no legal consequence. Republicans believe they have already offered meaningful concessions by supporting Mullin’s confirmation over Noem and want a clean funding bill that doesn’t tie the administration’s hands on enforcement.

Neither side is wrong that they’ve moved. Neither side appears to have moved enough.

Thune’s characterization of Thursday’s proposal as “last and final” is a standard negotiating posture, but it also suggests Republicans may not have more room to maneuver on their end. Coons’ acknowledgment that paper is moving back and forth is a small but real sign that a deal isn’t impossible.

Whether those two data points add up to a resolution before the recess begins is what the next 24 to 48 hours will determine. If they don’t, American travelers, TSA workers, and the federal employees still waiting for back pay will have more waiting ahead of them.