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House Speaker Mike Johnson chastised congressional Democrats on Friday, saying Republicans will not be part of any effort to reopen America’s borders and stop the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants.
Johnson held a two-hour conference call with House Republicans on Friday, saying they were all “united” in the party’s position to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to end the partial government shutdown that has injected chaos into air travel.
“They have taken hostage the funding processes of government so that they can impose their radical agenda on the American people,” Johnson told reporters of Senate Democrats.
REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: GOP EYES DHS DEAL FUNDING ICE PROBES, BUT NOT REMOVALS, AS SHUTDOWN DRAGS
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks as House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., right, listens during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Friday in which he blamed Democrats for the partial government shutdown. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP)
“The Senate Democrats have foisted upon this appropriations process their radical, crazy agenda,” he added. “We call it crazy because that’s what it is. They want to reopen the borders, and they want to stop the deportation of dangerous criminal illegal aliens. We have to do these basic functions of government.”
On Friday, the Senate advanced a bill to fund much of DHS, except for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol.
“The only thing standing between ending this chaos or not are House Republicans,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said. “There’s a bipartisan bill that emerged from the Senate with uniform support, and it should be brought to the floor immediately so we can pay TSA agents, so we can end the chaos at airports across the country and stop inconveniencing millions of Americans.”
Democrats have refused to fully fund DHS unless Republicans agree to new restrictions on federal immigration authorities.
JOHNSON…
