Unless Trump reins in ICE, Democrats threaten government shutdown

Democrats in the U.S. Senate are threatening to trigger a partial government shutdown unless the Trump administration agrees to change how its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conduct their controversial crackdown.

The standoff comes as U.S. President Donald Trump faces growing public pressure to rein in ICE following the shooting deaths of two American citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal officers conducting immigration sweeps.

Among the Senate Democrats’ demands: that ICE agents remove their masks, wear identification and body cameras, cease roving patrols and follow similar use-of-force guidelines as local police.

Without the reforms, the Democrats say they’ll block a funding package that’s facing a Senate vote on Thursday.

Failure to pass it would shut off the flow of money to a host of federal departments and programs starting Friday night, forcing what would be the second government shutdown in a matter of months.

Talks to try to reach a deal to avert the shutdown intensified Wednesday night between the White House and Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, according to reports by the New York Times and CNN.

WATCH | Decoding the messages in ICE’s recruitment campaign:

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been on a hiring spree, but some of its tactics are raising questions about who it’s really trying to recruit. CBC’s Jonathan Montpetit breaks down the disturbing parallels in the messaging, and why the danger goes beyond who might get hired.

Although the Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate, they need at least a handful of Democrats onside to get the 60 votes required to move funding resolutions forward.

The package funds the Department of Homeland Security for the rest of the fiscal year — including $770 million US for ICE detention and enforcement programs — but also includes the budgets for the departments of Defence, State, Transportation and Health and Human Services.

In Trump’s second term in the White House, the amount of public money allocated to ICE has rocketed, transforming it into the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the U.S., with a bigger budget than the FBI.

The Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill, passed by Congress in 2025, gave ICE a $75-billion US supplement to spend over four years atop its current annual budget of $10 billion US.

The official Trump sent this week to take over leadership of the Minnesota enforcement operation, border czar Tom Homan, told a news conference in Minneapolis on Thursday that he’ll only reduce the number of officers involved if state and local officials co-operate by handing over undocumented immigrants held in jails.