Press Releases

WASHINGTON — This morning, at the weekly House Republican Leadership press conference, Speaker Johnson discussed the absurdity of House Democrats demanding to defund CBP and ICE as a condition for reopening TSA, FEMA, and other critical DHS agencies.

“[Democrats] latest proposal would only partially fund DHS while stripping funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection. As Leader Scalise just reminded you, the discharge petition is really a petition to defund the police,” Speaker Johnson said. “The law enforcement agencies that are the part of the Department of Homeland Security are what they're targeting. Democrats refuse to reopen TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard and these other critical functions of government unless they can reopen our borders to illegal aliens.”

Watch Speaker Johnson’s press conference remarks here.

On Democrat efforts to defund Customs and Border Protection:

As one of the primary agencies responsible for protecting the homeland, Customs and Border Protection plays an irreplaceable role in our national security framework. This is not a game. Our CBP agents stand on the front lines. They protect our nation against transnational crime, drug and child trafficking, and terrorist threats before they reach our communities. It is our largest federal law enforcement agency. CBP is the largest federal law enforcement agency. Any bill that strips its funding, weakens our defenses against terrorist plots, undermines the integrity of our borders, and disrupts lawful travel through US ports of entry, including the millions of American and international travelers processed at our airports every single day.

Now, it bears repeating, in just the last two weeks, we have had four jihadist attacks on American soil, all of which originated from perpetrators who are already inside the country. Every one of those attacks fall squarely under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security. And the Democrats don't want to fund it. And now they're demanding we strip funding from the very agency responsible for stopping all of that. It's another dangerous game; a political game by Democrats that's as foolish as it is perilous.

On the dangerous Democrat shutdown:

[Democrats] had the longest shutdown in history last fall, as we all know, and now they've got the third. Today is a direct result of Democrats taking the Department of Homeland Security hostage in order to protect criminal illegal aliens. That's exactly what it is. Here's some of the stats: roughly 120,000 DHS employees, including 50,000 TSA agents, are going without pay for yet another week. FEMA's ability to respond to natural disasters is increasingly imperiled. We had some big weather events, as you might have noticed in the last 24 hours. Our agency of government that is responsible for assisting with that is being hampered. American airports obviously are reaching a breaking point, so severe that airlines are pleading with Democrats to please fund the Department of Homeland Security. It's fallen on deaf ears. Four separate times, Republicans have voted to fully fund DHS since this chaos ensued. Four times, and on each of those times, Democrats voted almost unanimously to block the funding.

On Democrats attempting to return to open border policies:

Democrats opened our borders wide to tens of millions of illegal aliens for four years under Joe Biden, including untold numbers of violent, hardened, and repeat criminals. That is an objective fact, and no one can refute it. They could have closed the border anytime. As you all know, I pleaded with President Biden after I became Speaker to do it. And he pretended as though he did not have the authority to close the border. They chose that. They chose to keep the border wide open, and they looked away. And that happened until President Trump was returned to office, and obviously we secured the border in a very short number of days because the law was always there. He always had the authority, and thankfully we got a Commander in Chief who understands national security and safety. And now when our borders are finally secure and when criminal illegal aliens are finally being held to account for breaking our laws, now the Democrats want to reverse course. They want to go back to open borders. They want to defund the agencies that are responsible for keeping law and order.