A limited US government shutdown came into effect on Saturday – the third of Donald Trump’s second term – after negotiations between the White House and Democrats in Congress failed to agree on new restrictions for federal immigration agents.
The shutdown affects about 13% of the federal civilian workforce and is confined to agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which screens airline passengers.
The latest shutdown is unlikely to be lifted soon – US lawmakers have left Washington DC for a 10-day break.
However, Republican leaders in Congress have said that negotiations would continue, and that members should be ready to return to Washington subject to an agreement.
In November, a different set of issues caused a broader shutdown of the federal government for a record 43 days.
Despite the lapse in DHS funding, work at the department is not expected to be widely disrupted. But travelers in the US could see screening delays at airports. Disaster relief and immigration enforcement could also be affected if the funding stoppage becomes prolonged.
Transportation Security Administration officers are expected to work without pay, but trade groups for the US travel industry and major airlines warned that the longer DHS appropriations lapse, the longer security lines at the nation’s commercial airports could get.
During past shutdowns, disruptions to air travel tended to build over timenot overnight. However, air traffic controllers employed by the Federal Aviation Administration will receive paychecks as usual, reducing the risk of widespread flight cancellations.
One immediate effect of the shutdown was the cancellation of the official House delegation to the Munich security conference. Democratic members of the body, including Bronx Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, made the trip but in a personal capacity.
“Some of us are going over anyway on our own dime to reassure and thank our allies,” Connecticut Democrat Jim Himes posted on X.
Colorado Democrat Jason Crow told NBC News that Republican House speaker Mike Johnson had ordered the hotel reservations, military flights and credentials to the conference to be cancelled.
Ocasio-Cortez said she was attending because Democrats “want to tell a larger story, that what is happening is indeed very grave, and we are in a new era, domestically and globally”.
At the center of the dispute are demands by Democrats for new restrictions on immigration agents following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis last month by federal immigration agents. The restrictions include mandating that agents perform operations without face masks and first obtain judicial warrants to make home arrests – demands Republicans largely reject.
However, the shutdown does not halt Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection operations because they were amply funded as part last year’s budget bill.
Ahead of the shutdown, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, criticized his counterpart, House speaker Mike Johnson, for adjourning Congress rather than keeping lawmakers in Washington to continue negotiations.
“We’ve drawn a hard line in the sand on behalf of the American people, and we’re not going to allow the Congress to cross it,” Jeffries told reporters on Friday. “ICE needs to be dramatically reformed. Period. Full stop.”
After Democrats rejected a White House offer on Thursday, the Senate minority leader called it “not serious, plain and simple.”
Schumer later posted a video on X that showed federal immigration agents pushing people to the ground and pepper-spraying them. “This is why Democrats voted NO on more funding for ICE. And we will continue to do so until ICE is reined in and the violence ends.”
But the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said: “What it appears to me, at least at this point, is happening is the Democrats, like they did last fall, they really don’t want the solution. They don’t want the answer. They want the political issue”.
Donald Trump told reporters Friday: “We’re talking, but we have to protect law enforcement. I know what they want, I know what they can live with. The Democrats have gone crazy.”
