Durbin Slams Republicans For Continuing To Hold Up The Bipartisan Deal To Fund Most Of DHS, Including TSA & FEMA

WASHINGTON – In a speech on the Senate floor, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, slammed congressional Republicans for continuing to hold up a bipartisan deal that would fund every agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—except U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The bipartisan deal that has passed the Senate unanimously on two separate occasions would fund the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other important DHS functions, but House Republicans refuse to put it on the floor for consideration.
“It has been more than 60 days since the White House and congressional Republicans allowed funding to lapse for the Department of Homeland Security—and for the government to partially shut down. This has turned out to be the longest government shutdown in American history. Day after day and week after week, Senate Democrats came to the floor and proposed funding all of the Department of Homeland Security, except two specific agencies, ICE and the Border Patrol agents withinCBP,”Durbin said.“In all, Senate Republicans blocked bills to fund TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard a total of 14 times.”
Durbin continued,“Why would they block the funding of these critical agencies? Because the White House and my Republican colleagues refuse to sit down and talk about the future of ICE and whether the rules that apply to law enforcement all across the United States will apply to ICE. It is an agency that we have seen in real time terrorize communities like Chicago and Minneapolis across this country with increasingly violent and militarized enforcement operations.”
Durbin then called out President Trump for unleashing ICE into major airports across the country supposedly to “supplement” security. Recent reporting indicates that, while deployed to our airports, ICE arrested more than 800 people after tips from airport security.
During his remarks, Durbin also noted that the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill, which Durbin coauthored as part of the “Gang of Eight” and passed the Senate on a strong bipartisan vote of 68-32, would have helped address many of the issues plaguing our broken immigration system today. But the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives refused to even consider it.
“When it comes to the future of immigration, I was involved several years ago with the Gang of Eight, four Democratic Senators, four Republican Senators, among them John McCain and Chuck Schumer, and we sat down for months and wrote up a bill—comprehensive immigration bill,”Durbin said.“It was supported by business and labor and the agriculture groups, and by and large it was bipartisan from start to finish… that bill passed the United States Senate with a bipartisan vote. That should have been the beginning of a conversation that leads us away from where we are today. But what happened? It was sent to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and for a variety of political reasons, it went nowhere.”
Durbin concluded,“It’s time for us to return and visit that issue again—for a comprehensive immigration reform plan. We’ve got to tell Stephen Miller to cool it. As far as I’m concerned, to turn ICE loose on more and more communities is just to make people fearful and not solve the problem we face. We’ve got to work together to solve it with a comprehensive plan, and we should be starting on that immediately.”
Video of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is availablehere.
Audio of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is availablehere.
Footage of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is availableherefor TV Stations.
-30-