With airports in chaos, Trump bats down potential DHS deal over SAVE Act battle

WASHINGTON − As ICE agents deploy to ease TSA lines at airports across the country, the pressure on the White House and Capitol Hill to end the monthlong shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is at its highest point yet.

President Donald Trump isn't yielding. Instead, he upended sensitive negotiations among lawmakers over the weekend, bucking Senate Republicans and aides by tying the shutdown fight to a voting restrictions bill that has little chance of surviving Congress.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, spoke to Trump on March 22, according to a person familiar with the conversation, to discuss a deal floated by White House staffers to potentially bring the funding crisis to an end before Congress is supposed to leave for a two-week Easter recess.

As part of the proposed compromise, which has support among key Senate Republicans, lawmakers could vote to sustain the rest of the department, including the Transportation Security Administration, while postponing a vote on ICE funding.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has continued operating, pulling from a vast reserve of cash allocated to it via the "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act" that passed Congress last year. Instead of a more-typical appropriations bill, Thune and Trump talked about how money could be routed to ICE with another reconciliation bill, which USA TODAY has reported lawmakers are already in talks about passing later this year.

The president rejected that offer.

"He's got a view about, you know, connecting everything to the SAVE America Act," Thune told reporters on March 23. "My view is we should deal with the immediate crisis in front of us and figure out how to fund the government."

The White House referred USA TODAY to a social media post from the president over the weekend in which he acknowledged that reopening DHS is not his biggest legislative priority.

"I don’t think we should make any deal with the Crazy, Country Destroying, Radical Left Democrats unless, and until, they Vote with Republicans to pass 'THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,'" Trump wrote. "It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate."

The dashed hopes of a nascent shutdown off-ramp come at a critical juncture, as the nation's airports reach a virtually untenable tipping point. TSA officers will go yet another week without pay and call-out rates are spiking by the day. Hundreds have resigned. And scenes of immigration enforcement agents, ostensibly sent to backfill for lost employees and help manage long lines, sparked unease at many airports.

“We're just trying to augment them where we can, that doesn't require their specific talent and training, and relieve those officers to do that specific task of screening,” border czar Tom Homan told Chris Cuomo’s SiriusXM show. “So we're trying to move the lines quicker. And I think ICE can help."

Homan has met several times over the past week with Senate Democrats and Republicans, prompting what lawmakers and aides have called constructive conversations and positive headway, especially about ramping up the use of body-worn cameras and reforming officer training.

Sticking points remain around mask bans, warrants and use-of-force standards, USA TODAY has reported.

After the White House rejected an offer on March 23 to meet again with Senate Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, accused Trump of trying to "sabotage negotiations."

A group of GOP senators, including Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican helping spearhead DHS negotiations, planned to meet with President Trump at the White House early Monday evening.

Zachary Schermele is a congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social.