The potential breakthrough came after a group of Republican senators headed to the White House late Monday to meet with President Donald Trump. Senators said they expected the negotiators to work through the night hammering out the details and present written proposals for both parties to discuss Tuesday at their weekly caucus lunches.
“All I can say is that the discussions have been very positive and productive, and hopefully headed in the right direction,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters late in the evening: “Both sides are working in a serious way.”
The sudden shift in the monthlong standoff comes as U.S. airports are jammed with long lines after routine Homeland Security funding was halted, leaving TSA understaffed during the spring travel season. Democrats are refusing to fund Homeland Security without restraints on immigration enforcement and mass deportation operations.
The contours of the deal under consideration would fund most of Homeland Security, but exclude funding for one main part of ICE — the enforcement and removal operations that are core to Trump's deportation agenda.
Under the package being floated, ICE's Homeland Security Investigations would be funded as well as Customs and Border Protection, but with new guardrails to position officers from those divisions in their traditional roles, rather than as they have been used more recently in immigration roundups in cities. It would also include a number of changes in immigration operations that Democrats have demanded, including mandating that officers wear body cameras and identification.
Since so much of ICE is already funded through Trump's big tax breaks bill, and immigration officers are still receiving paychecks during the partial government shutdown, senators said the new restraints would also be imposed on operations that rely on that funding source, as well.
"I'm going to be working through the night,” said Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, a chief negotiator who returned from the White House meeting hopeful they had a solution to “land this plane.”
“We’re going to be working diligently,” she said.
