WASHINGTON, D.C. –
With six of the FY 2026 12 appropriations bills already signed into law, and the U.S. House having just passed the remaining six, it appeared, heading into last weekend, that Congress would beat the January 30 deadline to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. The Senate was coming back to Capitol Hill and, aside from some uneasiness among a handful of Democrats over the bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, it appeared the six-bill package would easily pass and head to the White House for the president’s waiting signature.
Then Saturday happened in Minneapolis.
The fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents — the second deadly shooting in the administration’s immigration operation in that city this year — was the proverbial ‘final straw’ for Senate Democrats, who quickly united in saying they would block the DHS funding bill, unless and until it was amended to include new accountability and policies for the agency and its agents.
Democrats proposed that Senate GOP leadership strip that bill from the package, allow a vote on the other five bills (which include funding for critical departments like Defense, Labor, HHS and more), and approve temporary funding (a continuing resolution, or CR) for DHS, while they work to negotiate reforms. But Senate leaders rejected that, pointing out that making any changes to the package would require that it go back to the House, which is not in session this week. Thus, there would be a shutdown—at least a brief one, until the House could get back and vote on the new package.
As of Thursday afternoon, Senate Democrats and the White House were reportedly engaged in talks that could lead to a resolution very similar to what Democrats proposed.
Democrats and the White House struck a deal Thursday evening to avert a partial government shutdown and temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security as they negotiate new restrictions for President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement.
U.S. Senators Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and James Lankford (R-OK) spoke with Griffin Media Washington Bureau Chief Alex Cameron about the situation Thursday morning.
…on reforms to DHS they say were already in the original appropriations bill:
MULLIN: “We had an agreement before we left…on all six appropriation bills. The DHS bill was a product of a bipartisan approach, knowing that we needed Democrats to vote for it the whole time, so we were perfectly okay with with talking about what we need to do. I mean, for instance, there’s $20 million in it for body cameras, for the ICE agents.. there’s some reforms in there that we feel like is acceptable, that we negotiated. It also reduces spending on projects and for DHS funding as a whole. So, what they’re saying now is they’re not wanting to vote for DHS at all unless we have certain demands… the demands they’re having are not real realistic. I mean, not to mention even (Sen.) Patty Murray (D-WA) said that if– even if they CR or they just shut down DHS altogether, the only thing it shuts down as the Secret Service, FEMA, which is–we’re in the middle of a big ice storm, not just here, but all across the country. It shuts down the the Coast Guard, and it shuts down TSA and and parts of air traffic control, too. So, it doesn’t do one thing to keep ICE from doing their job. So, what they’re doing and what they’re asking for doesn’t make any sense. What we’re saying is, if you want to be realistic about some type of changes, we’re willing to talk to you. Right now, they’re not being realistic, so we’ve got to figure out, okay, how do we keep the majority of the government open, and then maybe CR the DHS…If we do the five appropriation bills, that’ll fund 96—almost 97% of government, so that most people won’t even know that the government–or part of the government–is shut down unless you’re flying. Because unfortunately, if you’re flying, you gotta also go through TSA.”
LANKFORD: “This is a situation where (Senate Majority) Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson have said to the White House, ‘Hey, this is an issue between you and the Democratic leader of the Senate to be able to resolve this and to be able to figure out what’s the resolution on it.’ We would hope for an administrative solution so we can still move appropriation bills through. Democrats so far have said, no, they don’t want to vote for, literally, the DHS bill they agreed on last week. I think you lose track of the fact that the Department of Homeland Security funding bill was negotiated by Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate together, and then all came to agreement. So, just last week, 80% of the House voted for this DHS funding bill because it was a bipartisan, bicameral bill. It was coming to the Senate and was certain to be able to pass with a very large margin, as well, here in the Senate. And then Democrats have said, no, we want to reopen it, renegotiate. The bill itself already has $20 million for body worn cameras for ICE and for Customs and Border Protection agents. It already has de-escalation training funding already built into the bill. These are areas where we all agree on that we should do. So, a lot of the things that they demanded early on are already in the funding bill that’s now being held up, and now new demands are being added on top, and some of the demands are not reasonable… (For example) Democrats are demanding that federal agents — border patrol, ICE — can’t wear a mask while they’re on duty. Now, no one likes the look of a mask, but then masks have become necessary because the protesters are filming federal agents, posting their picture or posting their name and their home address, saying they’re in this city carrying out ICE operations, this is their home address, their family’s home alone now. And then protesters are showing up at their home. That’s wrong, that’s wrong. So, to protect the ICE agents’ families, they’re wearing a mask to be able to prevent these hostile liberal protesters from filming them and then intimidating their family. So those are reasonable things. I don’t like the look of the mask either, but I also don’t like these protesters actually going back to their homes and intimidating their families and their children, while they’re at work, trying to be able to carry out lawful responsibilities.”
…on investigating the shooting death of Alex Pretti:
MULLIN: “I don’t have any issue with the investigation. What I don’t want is for Congress to do the investigation. Anytime you have lethal force from, let’s say, the Highway patrol, a lot of times they’ll call in OSBI to investigate for them. If you have a municipality, say Tulsa, that has had to use lethal force, they will bring in another agency in Oklahoma, or even bring in the sheriff’s department to investigate, or vice versa for the sheriff’s department. So it’s not unusual for an investigation to be handled outside of the agency by another agency. I have zero issue with that, but I want it to be handled by a professional law enforcement that does this, that they have an agreement with already to do — not Congress getting in there and trying to mandate it and keep a hand over it and have, ya know, oversight hearings, because that doesn’t accomplish anything except political theater.”
LANKFORD: “Let’s get the facts and the details out, and let’s try to figure out how to be able to do this better. Protesters have the right to be able to protest–this is the United States of America. They have the right to be able to speak out, protest, disagree. But when you’re actually engaging with federal law enforcement while they’re carrying out a lawful act on it, that escalates in a hurry on it. And in the case of Pretti, we know there was some pretty violent actions he had had leading up to this, that he’s not new to the protests. He kicked out the the tail lights of federal agents, he spit on federal agents. I mean, it was pretty rough, what he was trying to do. And so that it happened in the days leading up to this. There’s still no excuse for shooting someone on the ground. So, we’re trying to get all the facts and the details out on this. Let’s do a fulsome investigation and figure out how this can never happen again… I don’t think it’s helpful to be able to talk about a situation in full detail until you know the facts on it. I think about the tragic American Airlines crash at DCA airport where it collided with a helicopter. It’s a year later, now, and we’re just now getting the full report of all the details of that–it takes time to get all the testimony and get all the information. Every witness needs to be interviewed. All of the social media footage needs to be looked at. Body-worn cameras for those that had body worn cameras on, they need to then go through the process to be able to look at it, do the interviews with all the agents, do the work on this. Let’s get the facts out because that leads to change in the future when you get the details out. When you just knee-jerk and brush it off, you don’t learn from the mistakes on it. There’s always in this situation mistakes that were made. Let’s try to figure out what mistakes that were made so we can actually fix them for the future.”
…on what constituents in Oklahoma are saying about the incident:
MULLIN: “You know, honestly, from our constituents, you hear from a few. But overwhelmingly Oklahoma supports President Trump and supports restoring law and order. And they also understand this wouldn’t be an issue if Minnesota and Minneapolis were cooperating with with ICE. This wasn’t an issue in St. Louis, it wasn’t an issue in Memphis, it wasn’t even an issue here in Washington, DC, which is the most liberal city, I would say, in the country. It hasn’t been an issue in other communities—it wasn’t even an issue like this in Chicago. Minnesota, Minneapolis, underneath Tim Walz and Mayor Frey, they have made this an issue. If they were simply cooperating and doing their job, we wouldn’t be in this position, and most people in Oklahoma, they see the truth for that, for what it is.”
LANKFORD: “I was actually on the phone with the White House this weekend as well, being able to talk through what I’m seeing, what I’m hearing from Oklahomans, what I perceive and the actions that I would recommend back to the White House that they do. They took a lot of inbound from a lot of us to be able to talk about the different issues. I’ve had a lot of phone calls early this week, have continued through the week of people saying, ‘I may be supportive of removing criminal aliens, I don’t like this look.’ It is the challenge right now that ICE agents have — they have thousands of arrests a day that are uneventful, that are picking up rapists, that are picking up drug dealers, that are picking up people with multiple DUIs that are here illegally present and removing those. Those are positive things a lot of people support. They don’t like the look of what’s happening, and some of those things that are getting posted. And the challenge that they have is you’ve got a few things being posted of events that are making a broad sweep of what’s happening all around the country, and that’s just not true.”
LANKFORD: “Incredibly tragic shooting that is entirely avoidable, in so many ways. I’m frustrated with how things have been handled there. I see the difference between what’s happened in Illinois versus what’s happened in Minnesota. In Illinois, again sanctuary city around Chicago, federal agents went in to look for criminal aliens there, local law enforcement got between protesters and ICE agents and said protesters can protest right there, you have the right to be able to do that, we’re going to protect your rights, but you’re not going to jump in the middle and try to be able to interfere with the operations that are happening. So, there was a non-story that was really there in Illinois. Minnesota handled it very different– didn’t allow local law enforcement to be engaged. Protesters intermingled with what was happening with ICE agents and their operations, which escalated day after day after day, leading to this shooting that’s incredibly tragic and awful and very, very preventable. Typically, when you have protesters in this situation, you have protesters there and you have the operations there. Even when you have two different counter-protesters, law enforcement is there to be able to keep the two separate. Just the federal law enforcement did not have the support of local law enforcement or local leaders to be able to keep everything separate and it continued to escalate in this kind of violence.”
