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Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD., clashed with ABC News host Jon Karl on Sunday as he was questioned over what Democrats have achieved in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown fight.
The government has been in a partial shutdown for 44 days, affecting DHS. Democrats are demanding stringent reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the battle to fund DHS.
Karl asked Van Hollen about the “bottom line,” noting Congress was on recess and the DHS was still not funded and that Van Hollen had issued a statement that Republicans had “finally relented” on Friday.
“So when the Senate passed that bill and there was that brief moment, it looked like, you know, dawn had broken you put out a statement saying that Republicans had, quote, finally relented,” Karl said. “What did Democrats get out of this? Even if that passed, what did you get out of this this DHS shutdown‘s going on for well over a month? What have you gotten for it?”
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Van Hollen said Democrats wanted to fully fund TSA, and in turn, get rid of the long lines at airports. However, he said, ICE is a “lawless operation,” and said the Democrats wanted reforms.
“I guess what’s confusing here is you have fought and blocked the funding for the Department of Homeland Security because you object — as you just outlined — to what ICE has been doing, and you wanted to force changes,” Karl said during an interview with Van Hollen. “And yet, the only thing that has been assured throughout all of this is that ICE already has the money. Because as you said, $75 billion passed in the budget bill last year. So you’re holding up the entirety of the Department of Homeland Security because you object to ICE and you want changes to ICE, but through it all, ICE continues to have the money.”
Van Hollen accused Karl of making a “false statement” in saying that they were holding up the DHS funding.
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“We have said repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, we should fund TSA, we should fund FEMA, we should fund the Coast Guard. We are not prepared to give ICE another $10 billion on top of the money they already have and are using in many of these lawless operations,” Van Hollen said.
Karl interjected, “and fighting over that additional $10 billion, you are—you are holding up the rest of Department of Homeland Security.”
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“We’re not holding it up,” Van Hollen shot back.
“You’re holding up unless it doesn’t include money for ICE. That’s just a fact,” Karl responded.
The House passed a stopgap measure that would temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security late Friday.
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The two-month funding extension approved by the House is likely dead on arrival in the Senate, where any funding bill needs to overcome a 60-vote threshold, meaning buy-in from a handful of Democrats. That hurdle has not stopped House GOP leadership from arguing that their rejection of a Senate-passed deal — and pitching a subsequent rival DHS funding proposal — is the way out of the shutdown.
“We’re not going to split apart two of the most important agencies in the government and leave them hanging like that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters leaving the U.S. Capitol on Friday night. “We just couldn’t do it.”
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