{"id":20143,"date":"2026-03-17T21:01:45","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/white-house-releases-dhs-funding-offer\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T21:01:45","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:01:45","slug":"white-house-releases-dhs-funding-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/white-house-releases-dhs-funding-offer\/","title":{"rendered":"White House releases DHS funding offer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The White House on Tuesday released a letter detailing<\/a> changes it is willing to make to the Department of Homeland Security as it looks to secure a deal with Democrats to end the nearly five-week long partial government shutdown.<\/p>\n

The move is the Trump administration\u2019s attempt to show it is making a good faith effort after Democrats derided their proposal as unserious and comes as staffing issues at the Transportation Security Administration grow more acute \u2014 leading to longer wait times at airports across the country.<\/p>\n

The White House, in five points, said it was willing to codify a number of policy changes, including an expansion of the use of body cameras for federal immigration agents; the limit of enforcement in certain sensitive locations, including hospitals and schools; greater oversight of DHS detention facilities; the enforcement of visible officer identification and the adherence to existing law prohibiting the deportation or detention of U.S. citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel that this offer is serious \u2014 that it is a good faith attempt to continue to try to come to a reasonable and expeditious conclusion to the shutdown, which we are now seeing is becoming ever more disruptive on Americans\u2019 travel plans, as well as the security mission at the department,\u201d said a senior White House official granted anonymity to describe the private talks.<\/p>\n

The White House offer includes some public safety exceptions for the policy changes. For sensitive locations, there is a carve-out for \u201cnational security, flight risks and public safety,\u201d and undercover officers would not have to display identification. Undercover officers would also not be required to wear body cameras.<\/p>\n

The proposal also doesn\u2019t address two of Democrats main concerns: requiring officials to obtain a judicial warrant before entering private property and prohibiting federal agents from wearing masks. Administration officials have previously said the warrants are a redline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to move a little bit, but they\u2019ve got to get serious. They are not getting serious,\u201d Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. \u201cThe key issues of warrants when you bust in someone\u2019s house. The key issue of identity, of police and no masks. They haven\u2019t budged on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spokespeople for Schumer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the White House letter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first time in the monthslong negotiation that the White House has released details about its proposal. Republicans have been eager for the White House to share details of its offers to validate their view that the administration had moved toward Democrats on some issues.<\/p>\n

The White House letter argued that the majority of Democrats\u2019 demands would \u201cmake it impossible to fully protect American citizens from dangerous criminal aliens and expose law enforcement and their families to increasing threats of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The senior White House official said that at this time, there are no plans for President Donald Trump to meet with Schumer or Democrats to discuss the impasse. The president has tapped border czar Tom Homan \u2014 who co-signed the letter with James Braid, the White House director of the Office of Legislative Affairs \u2014 to take the lead on working on the policy changes to end the government shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of technical issues that have to be worked out\u201d for a White House meeting to be a \u201cproductive exercise,\u201d the senior official said. \u201cAlthough, of course, the president is going to make that decision, and at any time, that could be something that does occur.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House on Tuesday released a letter detailing changes it is willing to make to the Department of Homeland Security as it looks to secure a deal with Democrats to end the nearly five-week long partial government shutdown. The move is the Trump administration\u2019s attempt to show it is making a good faith effort […]<\/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-20143","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\/20143","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=20143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}