{"id":18286,"date":"2026-01-27T20:46:39","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/henry-cuellar-warns-against-shutdown-handing-dhs-blank-check\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T20:46:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:46:39","slug":"henry-cuellar-warns-against-shutdown-handing-dhs-blank-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/henry-cuellar-warns-against-shutdown-handing-dhs-blank-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry Cuellar warns against shutdown, handing DHS \u2018blank check\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar<\/a>, who helped craft and backed the Homeland Security funding bill now fueling a standoff in the Senate, said in an interview Tuesday that he supports putting more guardrails on federal immigration enforcement agencies but urged senators to pass the legislation the House approved last week.<\/p>\n

The partial government shutdown senators are barreling toward after Saturday\u2019s DHS-involved killing of a Minneapolis man, he warned, would be \u201cthe worst situation,\u201d leaving the controversial agencies operating with \u201ca blank check.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a government shutdown, what really happens? ICE got $75 billion in the big-beautiful-slash-ugly bill<\/a>. [But] you shut down FEMA, you shut down TSA, you shut down the Coast Guard, you shut down CISA,\u201d the moderate Texas lawmaker said. \u201cI don’t think that’s a good alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuellar, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he supports many strictures that got left on the cutting room floor in the House, including banning agents from wearing masks and requiring identification, codifying parts of the agency\u2019s use of force policy and notifying Congress about large surges in ICE activity.<\/p>\n

But he suggested those could be revisited in the next yearly funding cycle if Democrats are unable to secure commitments from Republicans before the shutdown deadline. And he said there are steps the Trump administration could take now to defuse tensions, such as increasing training and enforcing ICE\u2019s internal use-of-force policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sense an opening where I think we can get more Republicans to work with us,\u201d Cuellar said.<\/p>\n

Amid bipartisan backlash<\/a> to Alex Pretti\u2019s killing, Senate Democrats are seeking to strip the DHS funding bill from a larger six-bill appropriations package and renegotiate it. They\u2019re seeking a raft of new provisions, including requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests, mandating federal agents identify themselves and compelling DHS to cooperate with state and local investigations.<\/p>\n

But Republicans are scrambling to avoid making changes<\/a> to the massive bill as the Friday midnight deadline for a partial government shutdown approaches. With the House out till next week, passing the funding package intact is the only viable path to avoiding a shutdown.<\/p>\n

Cuellar joined his fellow Democrats and many Republicans in calling for independent investigations into the shootings of both Pretti and Renee Good, who was also killed in a confrontation with a DHS officer. And he didn\u2019t rule out joining House Democrats\u2019 push to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem if President Donald Trump doesn\u2019t fire her first.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll wait until a later time\u201d to weigh in, Cuellar said. \u201cBut I\u2019m certainly looking at everything that\u2019s going on, and [Trump and his team] definitely need to change course on it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who helped craft and backed the Homeland Security funding bill now fueling a standoff in the Senate, said in an interview Tuesday that he supports putting more guardrails on federal immigration enforcement agencies but urged senators to pass the legislation the House approved last week. The partial government shutdown senators are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}