White House Border Czar Tom Homan accused congressional Democrats Sunday of deliberately blocking Department of Homeland Security funding to force changes in immigration enforcement, saying lawmakers are “holding the department hostage” rather than pursuing policy changes through legislation.
“President Donald Trump wants the entire Department of Homeland Security funded,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The bottom line is they want changes in ICE tactics. They want changes in policy.”
The standoff has left tens of thousands of DHS employees, including Transportation Security Administration workers, without pay for weeks. Airport delays have mounted as TSA staffing shortages worsen. Trump signed an emergency executive order to ensure TSA agents receive pay. Homan said Sunday that payments are expected to go out by Monday or Tuesday.
The broader funding fight turns on a House-Senate divide. The Senate passed a bipartisan measure to reopen most of DHS, excluding funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and parts of Customs and Border Protection. Democrats backed that carve-out. House Republicans rejected it, passing a short-term funding bill with full ICE funding. That measure passed narrowly and hit a wall in the Senate, where Democrats have insisted any long-term deal must include new restrictions or oversight on ICE operations.
Homan said the private conversations in those negotiations tell a different story than the public posturing.
“They can say they don’t want to abolish ICE. I’m in the room,” he said. “They want to change operations so we arrest fewer people.”
Some lawmakers have pushed for expanded body camera use and stricter rules around enforcement locations. Homan noted roughly $120 million has already been allocated for ICE body cameras. He flatly rejected claims that agents are targeting churches or hospitals, saying not one instance of such an arrest can be cited.
“They can’t point to a single instance, not one, where we’ve arrested anybody in a church or inside of a hospital,” Homan said. “We already practice discretion. We don’t do operations in those locations unless a significant national security threat warrants it.”
Homan pushed back on claims that current enforcement is somehow new or uniquely aggressive. The legal framework ICE operates under has not changed across administrations, he said.
“The same laws ICE follows today have been in place during the Clinton and Obama administrations,” he said. “The law hasn’t changed.”
He framed the standoff as a constitutional question: Congress cannot use appropriations to rewrite enforcement policy and bypass the legislative process.
“If they don’t like what ICE is doing, then change the law,” Homan said. “That’s their job.”
As the stalemate drags on, DHS operations well beyond TSA continue to face disruptions. Democrats are holding out for enforcement restrictions as a condition of full funding. Republicans say those demands amount to defunding immigration law enforcement through the back door.
