Facing immigration backlash, Trump called Schumer to cut a deal
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 15 hours ago
- 5 min read
By CARL HULSE
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and minority leader, knew things were moving in his direction in the spending showdown last Wednesday afternoon when he got a surprise phone call in his Capitol office suite.
It was President Donald Trump, not a frequent contact in these days of hyper-polarized politics.
“He says, ‘Chuck, I hate shutdowns. I don’t like shutdowns. We’ve got to stop them,’” Schumer said in an interview as he recalled his conversation with Trump. “And I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, the thing you have to do is rein in ICE,’” referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The call touched off a rapid series of events that culminated in a rare compromise between a president who hates to give in and Democrats in Congress who have struggled to use what little leverage they have to counter his agenda. The deal, which did not come together in time to avert a brief shutdown of a large portion of the government starting Saturday, is fragile and could yet fall apart. The spending package needed to restore funding is set to reach the House on Monday, where approval is not yet certain.
But the agreement to freeze homeland security spending and negotiate over new restrictions on immigration enforcement reflected a swift political shift on Trump’s signature issue — one that has long been a vulnerability for Democrats — and demonstrated how a public backlash can turn those dynamics upside down.
On the phone with him Wednesday, Schumer had a message that he would later argue was persuasive to the president, who was already rushing to mitigate the political damage he and his party were facing amid public outrage in the wake of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minnesota.
“The American people hate what is going on in the streets,” Schumer said he had told Trump, adding that he had said, “Frankly, it’s hurting your credibility in every way. When they say ‘immigration,’ they don’t like what Trump does.”
A senior White House official, who discussed the talks on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview Saturday that Trump believes he was elected to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and that Schumer’s argument did not sway him from that conviction.
Still, the Democratic leader was not the first to warn the president of the political peril he faced in the aftermath of the killing of Alex Pretti last weekend in Minneapolis. The scenes of chaos in Minnesota had sparked a backlash. Republicans in Congress, who rarely challenge or criticize Trump, were sounding the alarm about immigration operations they warned had spiraled out of control. Trump had decided to send his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota and remove Gregory Bovino, the border patrol commander who had become the aggressive face of his immigration crackdown.
It had become clear to the administration after Pretti’s death that Democratic support for a spending package needed to keep the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, running past a Friday deadline had evaporated. Trump had instructed his aides to find a way to avoid another government shutdown, the White House official said. What was still unknown, he added, was what it would take to win Democrats’ votes to do so.
Trump also knew by then that if he wanted a deal to avert a shutdown and quiet the outcry over his immigration operations, he was going to have to deal with Schumer.
Earlier Wednesday, in what appeared to be a bid to make an end run around the minority leader, White House legislative affairs aides had reached out to some of the Democrats who had broken from Schumer last fall and crossed party lines in a vote to end a record-breaking shutdown. Would they like to attend a listening session at the White House to discuss a potential deal? They all declined.
The White House official said the administration had requested the session to hear the details of what Democrats were demanding. Instead, Democratic senators stayed at the Capitol and huddled behind closed doors, emerging from their caucus meeting united to lay out their conditions: unmasking immigration agents, ending their indiscriminate sweeps and requiring them to obtain warrants as well as abide by strict use-of-force guidelines, among others.
Several Democrats had made it clear publicly, in the wake of Pretti’s killing, that they would not vote for any further funding for the Department of Homeland Security without new restrictions on federal immigration agents.
One of the influential Democrats who had been key to ending the fall shutdown, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, had issued a statement saying as much on the day of the Pretti shooting. By Monday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who played a lead role in brokering last fall’s deal, had said the same.
Schumer said that the idea of trying to separate the homeland security money from the rest of a large spending package that was on track to sail through the Senate had already been percolating among some Democrats, but the killing of Pretti had stiffened their spines.
“On Saturday, we knew we couldn’t go forward after that without changing homeland security,” he said. The decision was made that Democrats would deny Republicans the 60 votes required to advance the spending package, which was needed to avert a shutdown Friday, in a bid to force changes.
“We don’t have that many leverage points in the Senate,” Schumer said of the minority party, “but obviously, spending is one of them.”
Laboring to preserve the painstakingly negotiated funding package before the shutdown deadline, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. and majority leader, encouraged the Democrats to work with the White House on executive actions that Trump might be able to take to satisfy them without reopening the spending bills. But Democrats did not trust Trump to follow through. They were insisting on legislation.
In their first conversation, Schumer urged the president to reach out to Thune and encourage him to split off the homeland security funding from the rest of the spending package. Within an hour, the president was back on the phone to the minority leader along with Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson and Homan.
Trump endorsed considering the homeland security funding separately. Thune was amenable, Schumer said, but the speaker, who will now have to push the package across the finish line in the House with his minuscule majority, was more reticent.
Getting his members back quickly for a vote would be problematic, Johnson said. And he favored a longer period of stopgap funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Schumer balked at that idea, saying Democrats wanted a short extension to spur quick talks. They would agree to no more than two weeks, he said. A tentative agreement was in hand.
Schumer said Trump then checked back Thursday to make certain the arrangement was in place and that Democrats had the votes to help push it through. The president noted some Republican dissension, but the final push was on.
White House officials said that they expected the revised measure to pass, even if the House is unpredictable. Yet the road ahead for the deal is far from smooth, starting with the House vote, expected Monday night or Tuesday. And while the outcome represented a victory for Schumer and Democrats, the negotiations over new limits on immigration officers and security operations promise to be contentious, with no guarantee of a quick agreement.
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