The NPR Politics Podcast - Why Democrats have little leverage to reform ICE

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Most of the Department of Homeland Security has been without funding for two months, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement got billions of dollars from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We discuss how that funding insulates the agency from congressional oversight and how a proposal from congressional Republicans could further limit accountability. Plus, the significance of another failed vote to rein in the administration’s war powers.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, immigration policy correspondent Ximena Bustillo, congressional reporter Sam Gringlas and White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And I'm Jimenez-Bustillo and I cover immigration. And it's Friday. So let's catch up on some of the political news we haven't already talked about on the pod, starting with an ongoing fight over funding at the Department of Homeland Security. Sam, this is an agency that has been without funding for more than 60 days now. Can you give us the latest? Yeah, I feel like a lot of people maybe have forgotten that this agency is still shut down and that this fight is ongoing. And it very, very, very, very. much is. So there was an agreement in the Senate at least to fund all of DHS except for immigration enforcement agencies ICE and Border Patrol. This passed the Senate, but it has been sitting in the House for the last three weeks amid pushback from inside the House Republican caucus who don't like this idea of carving out the immigration enforcement agencies and handling them later in a party line vote and who also want to stick a lot of other stuff. stuff into that offensual party line vote. So there's conflict there. And three weeks after a supposed deal to end this thing, we're still in the middle of this fight.

Hey, Man, you cover the Department of Homeland Security. Tell us a little bit more about the impacts that we're feeling at this point. Yeah. I mean, it's probably very normal for the average person to, as Sam said, forgot that this was sort of happening. You can go to the airport and you still see TSA that's there. And then like maybe you remember that TSA is also a part of Homeland Security while you're doing that. But I think it's important to remember that for a while those TSA agents were not getting paid. And then President Trump signed a memo, authorizing, you know, particular federal funds to get moved over to streamline the pay and then signed a separate memo to then start paying the rest of the department. And we're talking about

250,000 people that work for DHS. Now, there are other potential impacts, so TSA is getting paid, but yesterday the TSA administrator testified that the agency is preparing to lose even more workers as the shutdown drags on. And attrition is something that TSA has particularly seen in the last six months, because there's not just the shutdown, but the one from the fall as well. And she said that shortages in TSA staffing could still lead to long delays at airports. But then separate from that, the U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Kevin Lunday said that there were over 500 unpaid utility bills because of the shutdown, which is threatening to cut off electricity and water to Coast Guard stations. And so the average person might not be concerned about whether or not they're going to get

their mail or be able to go to a national park like we talk about with other shutdowns. But there are real lags in training, real lag in paycheck, real lag in just like programs operating with homeland right now. The reason that Democrats have not signed on to funding DHS, though, is to push for reforms to immigration enforcement. Have we seen, even though there hasn't been a funding deal that puts changes into law, have we still seen this have an impact on ICE enforcement at all? I mean, there definitely is so much pressure on the agency and so much scrutiny. on the agency, I think, the last four months than we saw all of last year. I mean, right after two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal immigration officers that work for DHS, so immigration and customs enforcement and border patrol, out of Minneapolis, we really saw

Democratic senators suddenly shift their tone. And that's what kind of started this whole thing, is them saying we're not going to include funding DHS with the rest of the federal government. And since then, there hasn't been anything on the legislative front, but we have seen the departure of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Nome as the first cabinet secretary to leave the Trump administration. And then as of last night, the head of IAS Todd Lyons also handed in his resignation. And so we are seeing a lot of big leadership changes. You know, that's not to say that the policies have changed. We are still seeing this administration take a very strong. sharp, strong approach to not just curbing illegal immigration, but legal migration. But, you know, we are kind of seeing some of the tone begin to waiver at least for now.

Sam, you reported this week about the sort of kind of limits of the leverage that Democrats have in terms of trying to force changes at ICE. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah. So one reason that Democrats have not been able to extract any of these demands that they have been asking for is that the agencies are really not being. hemmed in by the appropriations process, which is one of the really big checks that Congress has on the executive branch to initiate reforms or request information or seek policy changes. And that is because last year, Congressional Republicans gave ICE and other agencies within DHS a huge pot of money with very few strings attached, $75 billion for immigration and customs enforcement. And that has allowed that agency to continue their operations, despite this shutdown without feeling a lot of the pressure that Democrats hoped that they would.

And just to put that $75 billion number in some context, usually that agency gets about $10 billion a year. So this is just a huge, huge bucket of money with very few strings attached to how it's spent. And we don't fully know how it's being spent because on one hand, it is allowing, for example, deportation officers to still get paid even when other employees at DHS and, even within ICE, are not getting paid. But then we're, like, seeing this argument from top officials that it's like, well, they can't just always use this money for, you know, like these World Cup game trainings or something like that. And so there are a lot of questions and ultimately a lack of oversight is what it lands on. And, you know, and I talked about this with a former acting director of ICE. His name is John Sandwig.

And he basically described the $75 billion as a blank. When you have tens and tens of billions of dollars with very limited oversight and no fear that you're going to have problems in the next fiscal year with Congress, you have created a real vulnerability to fraud or just misconduct. And, you know, now Republicans are gearing up to give these agencies more money in this fashion. You know, at the top of this conversation, I mentioned that part of this deal to fund DHS is to carve out these immigration enforcement agencies, immigration and customs enforcement and Border Patrol and fund them separately in a party line maneuver for three years, that's going to be

another potential big pot of money without strings attached and without this annual appropriations process. Tell me a little bit more about that, because that does seem rare to fund an agency. I just having covered politics for the last decade, I'm very used to every year you kind of have this annual argument about like everything in everything that Congress funds essentially, but this would exempt these agencies from that level of scrutiny. Is that, my understanding. Yeah, this is really unusual and another example of Congress relinquishing its authority in regards to the executive branch and when it comes in this case to the power of the purse. You know, we've even heard some Republicans express frustrations about this, including

Republican Representative Mark Amaday of Nevada. But it's like saying we're going to abolish Article 1 for three years. We want to give you your stuff in a consistent, predictable, sustainable way. That's our job. That's what we owe to you. Just pre-fund me for three years. Really? Why don't you prepay me for three years? You'd be dumber in hell to do that. Now, he is the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee in the House that funds DHS. And so those comments were made during yesterday's budget hearing where, you know, members on both sides of the aisle thought that it was silly that they were talking about the fiscal year 2027 budget when there is currently no. fiscal year, 2026 budget at all. And so there really is this like broader question of how to actually move forward with this. And I should say that that is a minority position among Republicans that we just heard and that when you talk to most Republicans, they accuse Democrats of subverting Congress's responsibility to fund the government and believe that we are in an era where Democrats may

never again vote to fund ICE or Border Patrol and they are really left without any options here. And the one other thing that I'll just add here is, is for people who don't follow regular appropriations, like essentially every year, like the president comes out with the budget and says, this is what I would like you to give all my federal agencies. And then every top official from every federal agency gets called in the Congress to do what these eight officials did yesterday, which is the president is asking money for this and here's why. And congressional lawmakers get to ask questions about how money has been spent. And then if they get this money, how it will be spent.

That's the oversight. If you do not go through this process every single year and you just essentially prepay up front three years, there's no reason for administration officials to come in and provide an explanation for not just how they've spent the money, but also like how they plan to spend future money. Like there are other levels. Like you can send letters and requests and stuff like that. But this is just a very public, regular form. All right. Well, Heman, thank you so much for your time and for your reporting as always. Thanks.

Let's take a quick break when we come back how Congress is responding to the war in Iran. And we're back. Now joined by NPR White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Hi, Danielle. Always happy to be here. Always happy to have you. So let's stick with this theme of Congress's relationship with the executive branch, but this time looking at it through a different lens, through the lens of the ongoing war in Iran.

Congressional Democrats forced a vote on what's known as the war powers resolution related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Sam, get us up to speed there. What is the war powers resolution and why does this matter? Okay, so I want to start by going back just a little bit to the Constitution. The Constitution gives the president. It always comes back to the Constitution. The number of times that I've actually pulled out my pocket Constitution for stories about Congress in the last couple of months is more than once. So what I want to say something, doesn't it?

I think it does. It says a lot of things honestly about Sam, about Congress. It's a lot. So what I want to say here is that the Constitution gives the president. the power of being commander-in-chief. But it also gives Congress the power to declare war. And in the founding era, the first century of this country, that didn't actually create a lot of tension. But on the outside of World War II, the United States becomes this global superpower with nuclear weapons. And the president has a lot more leeway on their own to unilaterally

get the United States involved in conflict. Fast forward to the Vietnam War and President Nixon is carrying out a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia. There's a lot of congressional push back when it becomes public, and that prompts Congress to pass something called the War Powers Resolution, which does a bunch of things, but two really important ones. One, it gives Congress the ability to pull back the president from conflict with a vote of Congress. And it also sets a 60-day timeline that the president has to pull back if Congress hasn't formally authorized the president to be engaged in this conflict. And these are the votes that we've been seeing in Congress over the last couple months about Iran, but also other things like Venezuela.

Okay. So this vote failed in the House, I think, by one vote, right? Where does that leave things? So we keep seeing these votes happening again and again. And we know that this is part of the strategy of Democrats is to keep holding these votes, hoping that they can chip away Republicans as this conflict either widens or goes on, especially as we get to the 60-day mark that I've been talking about in the context of the war powers resolution. We even, even did hear from some Republicans in the early days of this conflict, that if this conflict is going on at that point, that's when they're really going to start to have some more concerns. And so that will be a big point to take stock of where Republicans are on this conflict. How emboldened do you

think the fact that these votes do keep failing, Danielle, how does the White House take that in terms of basically giving them a little bit of a blank check at this point? Even though this war powers resolution that Sam is talking about only applies to Iran. I do think that should, hypothetical here, should it continue to fail or be rejected in Congress, then that might make the White House feel even better and more emboldened about whatever they might be planning with regards to Cuba. Trump has said several times, including this week, he has hinted at some sort of action in Cuba. He told USA today this week, quote, we may stop by Cuba after we're finished with this, this being the conflict with Iran. So, yeah, I would say that they might well decide that, cool, if Congress still isn't going to

stop us after Venezuela, after this, then we're just going to keep going. You know, without Congress, strikes were ordered by President Clinton in the former Yugoslavia, President Obama in Libya, President Trump in Syria, and President Biden in Yemen. So this is not just President Trump who was doing this. But if you talk to war powers, historians, they say he is taking an additional constitutional leap here when you look at the nature, the scope and the duration of this particular conflict. And so I think Danielle is right to ask whether this continues to open that door for future presidents to take these bigger and bigger leaps. And there have been some new developments in recent days that we haven't talked about on the pod yet. Danielle, can you get us up to speed on the latest in the war?

Yes, absolutely. So there have been a couple of things. One is that there has been a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. that is a 10-day ceasefire. But crucially, what we should point out here is that Hezbollah, which is Iran-backed and which Israel has been attacking in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah is not Lebanon. So there is this ongoing question of exactly how Hezbollah will act in light of this ceasefire. We also learned today from President Trump.

He posted on social media that the Strait of Hormuz is open. however the U.S. naval blockade is still in effect with regards to Iran. What that means is that commercial ships can go through the Strait of Hormuz, but U.S. ships are still stopping any ships from going into or out of Iranian ports. Now, does this mean that traffic is going to immediately bounce back to pre-Iran war levels? There's a lot of questions regarding that. I mean, Trump did say that. that Iran has removed or is removing all mines. But you can imagine that some companies, shipping companies might still have some trepidation about going through that straight right now. Yeah, and I should also say that markets have responded to these developments. I know oil prices have come down. The stock market shot up over the last day or so. Also related to the economy this week, Danielle, the administration quietly announced a mechanism related to tariffs after the Supreme Court ruled that some of Trump's tariffs were illegal. Can you explain what's going on there

and how this refund program that was announced will work? Yeah. I'm going to give you the very abbreviated version of this. So Customs and Border Protection, which is the government agency that collects tariffs. They announced a new portal that is called Cape that is going to be where a big company can go in and say, look, I paid all of these tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled were unlawful. Please give me all of this money back. Thank you. So this portal is going to open on Monday. That is what we know. And we also know that it's only going to be at first for certain tariff payments that have been made. The very short version is that CBP is going to pay out the easiest to pay out tariffs first. The most recent, paid ones and ones where there's not some sort of dispute or additional tariffs or

countervailing duties, anything like that involved. So that's what's happening. But there's a lot, lot that is still very uncertain. For example, after the Supreme Court in February said, hey, the IEPA tariffs are unlawful, then there was this question of when and how refunds were going to happen. Well, a judge on the court for international trade ruled that, yeah, you do have to pay back the tariffs. Go do it. Now, the Trump administration right now has until early June to appeal that. So one big question is, does the Trump administration appeal that? How much of it do they appeal? What direction do they go in? It is quite possible that they could say that some tariffs they just don't have to pay back for this reason or that. One other thing, though, is that the Trump administration certainly has not talked about tariff refunds with joy and alacrity. Like, from the beginning, they've made it clear that they want to fight tariff refunds in court. And just this week, a reporter asked Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, how these refunds could affect the economy. And here's what he said.

Again, we'll have to see what comes out. and we'll have to see what the companies do with them. Just to be clear, just to be clear, thanks to the Supreme Court, some of this money is going back to China. So is that going to affect the U.S. economy? I don't know. To fact-check him for the millionth time here, it is not China that pays the tariffs. It never has been. It is U.S. companies importing goods that have been paying the tariffs. Got it.

Well, I mean, I think big picture, the tariffs thing does kind of relate to, the war powers resolution, Sam, in that this is something that Congress used to say was our job. And now, I guess I do see these things as a little bit connected. Yeah, I mean, and not just war powers and not just terrorists, but also this appropriations fight with DHS funding that we've been talking about. This is one more example of Congress relinquishing its constitutional powers to the executive branch. You know, that is a through line of almost all of the stories we are doing about Congress. right now. And I talked about this in the appropriations context with University of Michigan law professor, Sam Baganstas. He used to be a top official at the Office of Management and Budget. And he says that if

Congress doesn't step back in to reclaim its prerogative in these spaces, then we have a really great risk of executive branch tyranny. And I don't see why every executive in the future isn't going to follow some playbook like this. And so the question Baganstas is posing there, is not just what does that mean for this administration, but for future presidents as well. And that's something that Supreme Court justices also got at when they ruled against these tariffs of Trumps. You did have some of them saying, well, this could just lead future presidents to, yeah, just keep usurping Congress's power. Then what is Congress for in the first place? So Supreme Court justices have thought about this.

So now the question is, even with the Supreme Court having reigned in Trump on this one thing, these terrorists. Then if he's been reined in there, Congress still can step in for Trump's other tariffs. Congress still can step in and impose or say no thank you to those tariffs. So it's not just the Supreme Court that is doing it here. Okay. Let's take one more break. When we get back, time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back.

And it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And I'll start us off this week. I, you know, I listen to a lot of music. And I don't know about you guys, I feel like as I'm discovering new music, I feel like I'm constantly just hoping for that like lightning strike moment of like when something like really hits your core. I don't know. I feel like I listen to all these albums.

And the last like year very rarely has something like really broken through. I'm excited for where this is going. Well, I just had, I don't know. There's nothing more than to say other than that I listened to an album this week that like did it. And I was like on a walk with my dog. And it was like one of those like pink sunsets outside. And I put on this album that I barely knew anything about. And like I feel like I like.

Levitating. Exactly. Like I did like basically like a daydream walk for an hour and just listen to this record over and over again. And I'm going to play a little bit of the first song. This is by a band called Sluse and the album is called Companion. The song is called Beattie. And nothing more I can say other than that it starts really cool. quiet, it's like twangy kind of country rock. It has a reference to the wire. It is like everything.

It feels like it was built in a focus group for me. Made for Miles. Exactly. I got back on the SSRI. My parents met in high school when they were just 17. Some real Wilco vibes here. Exactly. It is like total Wilco vibes. I'm sorry, Miles. Are you a dad? I happen to be, I know, I'm like, guilty is charged, Danielle. It did feel like as I was levitating to this. I was just like, I'm leaning into myself here. Hey, I, listen, listen, I, I am a stereotype of a suburban mom as well. I get it.

I'm just saying, I'm not being a jerk. I totally get it. I'm not, again, I'm like, I'm done with leaning away from myself. I'm full, I'm leaning in. Hell yeah. And like this album I'm going to listen to 150 more times this year. and I recommend our listeners to go do the same. I'm here for the country rock.

I can totally picture you on this walk in your neighborhood listening to this music. Also, last thing on this is I really like this when this happens. So I'm on a walk with my dog, and the first lyric of this song is about a person walking their dog at sunset, and I was on a walk with my dog at sunset. And I don't know. There's something about that moment when music lines up with your life in a way that also hits different. Sam, what can't you let go of? Okay, so, Miles, you talked about a struck-by-lightening kind of moment with that music.

That is a nice segue into what I want to talk about, which have you seen the Netflix series Death by Lightning? I watched the first episode, which I enjoyed. I just, I don't know, I don't know why I didn't continue it, but I saw the first episode. It was great. Okay. So for folks who don't know what this is, this is a mini series about the assassination of President Garfield. And this week, the Capitol Historical Society hosted a talk with the historian who wrote the book that it's based from, which is called Destiny of the Republic, and Nick Arfiel. who plays Chester A. Arthur in the series. And so first of all, total nerd capital moment that I got to experience this week. But the thing that I keep thinking about is this amazing story that the historian described in her talk. And she said that she was researching, her name is Candice Millard. And she was researching this book in the Library of Congress going through all of these documents in this very beautiful space. And she came across an envelope that she thought was just going to be a run-of-the-mill

letter. So she starts to open it. And it took it. Turns out a bunch of hair spills onto the desk in front of her. And written on the flip side of the envelope says clipped from President Garfield's head on his deathbed. And first of all, wild, weird, kind of gross. But what she told us is that it reminds you of this responsibility that you have as a historian, as a storyteller, to see these as real human people, even all those years ago. And I think this is a great lesson for us as journalists, even though, we're covering people in the modern day. These are sometimes larger than life figures. We are writing

the first draft of history. And I think that is something I want to keep with me as we tell stories about people in politics in Washington. Capital Hill is interesting in that way that every time I've gone up there to cover something, it is, that's one of the things I'm struck by as I'm talking to lawmakers who I see on TV all the time. But I'm like, oh my God, that's like a person. Like that person kind of looks like my dad or that person is kind of like, it is very weird to be that close in you. You are kind of reminded that like these are human beings. You know, I talked to a senator once who's like, I can't talk to you right now. I just came from the dentist.

And you realize, yes, these are real people. The lawmakers get cavities, too. Danielle, what can't you let go of? I have something kind of in that vein of politicians. They're just like us. This week, New York City, Mayor Zoran Mamdani was talking about a new fund that his administration is creating called the Mayor's Fund. The idea being to get a bunch of money from philanthropists to help pay for, for example,

his universal child care initiative. But he described it in a very particular way, and here is a cut. I like to think of it this way. Government is driving the race car, and philanthropy is there to give it that turbo boost to cross the finish line. Or if you are a Mario Kart fan, government is Yoshi and philanthropy is the golden mushroom. That edge we need to beat Bowser on the Rainbow Road. To belabor this metaphor even further, Bowser is corporate greed in this scenario. It made me think about the passage of time.

How, like, I tend to think of politicians as, like, as being several decades older than me. And here is a politician talking about an initiative and making it clear that, like many of us, he has sat on his friend's living room floor or dorm room floor and played hours of Mario Kart. And, like, I don't know. I have, I grew up in Iowa. The senator there was Chuck Grassley. And I don't think Chuck Grassley has ever sat on anyone's dorm room. floor playing Mario Car. He's probably listened to a photograph. You know what I mean?

And like, I am now at the age where my lawmakers are... Chuck Grassley catches strays also. Hey, he's... He's always posting complaints about the history channel doesn't do real history anymore. Listen, if Chuck Grassley's office is listening and you can tell me that he has

played Mario Kart, I will... And he wants to play Mario Kart with me. Hey, I'm down. All right, we can leave it there for today. Our executive producer is Methoni Materi. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs. Our editor is Rachel Bay. Special thanks to Dana Farrington, Ben Swayze, and Christiana Dev Kalimer. And lastly, a big thank you to Anusha Mather, our Washington desk intern in the last few months.

Thank you so much, Anusha, for everything you did to make our journalism better. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.