Published 53 mins ago Last Update 5 mins ago
Lawmakers have 'agreement in principle' in border security talks
By Samuel Chamberlain | Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lawmakers-have-agreement-in-principle-on-border-security-talks
Video link:https://video.foxnews.com/v/6001030350001/
Congressional negotiators revealed Monday evening that they've reached "an agreement in principle" on border security funding and other issues that could avert a second partial government shutdown this year.
When asked if they had an agreement that President Trump would approve, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters: "We think so. We hope so." Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, declined to give details of the deal but said a final text could be released by Wednesday.
Lawmakers have until 11:59 p.m. Friday to get the agreement through both houses of Congress and signed by Trump before several Cabinet-level departments shut down and hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed.
Sources tell Fox News that the agreement allots approximately $1.3 billion for Trump's long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, much less than the $5.7 billion the White House has requested. The administration had dangled the possibility that Trump would declare a national emergency and divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, but that move would certainly be challenged in Congress as well as in the courts.
Talks almost collapsed over the weekend after Democrats pushed to reduce funding for detention beds to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A House Democratic aide told The Associated Press that Republicans already had agreed to funding cuts that would require ICE to ramp down the number of detention beds to a range of 34,000-38,500 by the end of the year. ICE currently detains about 49,000 immigrants on average per day.
But a proposal to cap at 16,500 the number of detainees caught in areas away from the border — a limit Democrats say is aimed at preventing overreach by the agency — ran into its own Republican wall.
Shelby told reporters Monday night that the bed issue had been worked out, but declined to give details. "We think it's going to work," he said. "We had some hard negotiations."
Sources told Fox News that the agreement called for a little more than 40,000 ICE beds, a cut of approximately 18 percent from current levels.
According to ICE figures, 66 percent of the nearly 159,000 immigrants it reported detaining last year were previously convicted of crimes. In 2016 under President Obama, around 110,000 immigrants were detained and 86 percent had criminal records.
At the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump softened his rhetoric on the wall but ratcheted it up when alluding to the detention beds issue.
"We can call it anything. We'll call it barriers, we'll call it whatever they want," the president said. "But now it turns out not only don't they want to give us money for a wall, they don't want to give us the space to detain murderers, criminals, drug dealers, human smugglers."
Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lawmakers have 'agreement in principle' in border security talks
By Samuel Chamberlain | Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lawmakers-have-agreement-in-principle-on-border-security-talks
Video link:https://video.foxnews.com/v/6001030350001/
Congressional negotiators revealed Monday evening that they've reached "an agreement in principle" on border security funding and other issues that could avert a second partial government shutdown this year.
When asked if they had an agreement that President Trump would approve, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters: "We think so. We hope so." Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, declined to give details of the deal but said a final text could be released by Wednesday.
Lawmakers have until 11:59 p.m. Friday to get the agreement through both houses of Congress and signed by Trump before several Cabinet-level departments shut down and hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed.
Sources tell Fox News that the agreement allots approximately $1.3 billion for Trump's long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, much less than the $5.7 billion the White House has requested. The administration had dangled the possibility that Trump would declare a national emergency and divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, but that move would certainly be challenged in Congress as well as in the courts.
Talks almost collapsed over the weekend after Democrats pushed to reduce funding for detention beds to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A House Democratic aide told The Associated Press that Republicans already had agreed to funding cuts that would require ICE to ramp down the number of detention beds to a range of 34,000-38,500 by the end of the year. ICE currently detains about 49,000 immigrants on average per day.
But a proposal to cap at 16,500 the number of detainees caught in areas away from the border — a limit Democrats say is aimed at preventing overreach by the agency — ran into its own Republican wall.
Shelby told reporters Monday night that the bed issue had been worked out, but declined to give details. "We think it's going to work," he said. "We had some hard negotiations."
Sources told Fox News that the agreement called for a little more than 40,000 ICE beds, a cut of approximately 18 percent from current levels.
According to ICE figures, 66 percent of the nearly 159,000 immigrants it reported detaining last year were previously convicted of crimes. In 2016 under President Obama, around 110,000 immigrants were detained and 86 percent had criminal records.
At the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump softened his rhetoric on the wall but ratcheted it up when alluding to the detention beds issue.
"We can call it anything. We'll call it barriers, we'll call it whatever they want," the president said. "But now it turns out not only don't they want to give us money for a wall, they don't want to give us the space to detain murderers, criminals, drug dealers, human smugglers."
Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.