Dem Sen. Tina Smith: What We Have Achieved with Our DHS Shutdown Is a Unified Vote to Fund Everything Except ‘Illegal Agencies’ ICE and CBP

EXCERPT:

SMITH: “What we have achieved is our unified vote to fund everything in the Department of Homeland Security, except for these illegal agencies and Customs and Border Patrol and ICE. And again, I want to remind everybody who's listening to this that what we wanted was to put some basic common sense safe guardrails on how these agents have been acting to stop the worst of the abuses like we saw in my home state of Minnesota. And we weren't able to even get our Republican colleagues to agree to that. So we might not have power in Congress, but we are not powerless to carry forward what we believe is the best thing for this country. And again, that's why we have voted multiple times to fund the department and why Republicans are now taking this our way or the highway approach.”