The partial government shutdown tied for the longest lapse in federal funding Friday, as sides seemed no closer to a deal that would return federal employees to work.
During remarks to reporters during his trip to the border in McAllen, Texas, on Thursday, President Trump seemed to indicate he would be open to a larger immigration reform package, particularly one that dealt with the practice of releasing illegal migrants who have been arrested back into the U.S. while awaiting immigration hearings known as catch-and-release.
“If they came to me with a package beyond the barrier and if it was something that we all agreed with, that the senators agreed with, that everybody liked, it’s common sense … If they want to straighten things out and do something with catch-and-release, which was one of the great disasters with immigration of all time,” Trump said.
Trump, who has toyed with the idea of declaring illegal immigration at the border a national emergency to then use military funding — reportedly disaster relief money from the Army Corps of Engineers — to pay for the wall, said in an interview Thursday with Fox News’ Sean Hannity he didn’t see why he couldn’t make a deal with Democrats first.
“I think we are going to see what happens over the next few days. They should do it immediately. Look, we’re not going anywhere. We are not changing our mind because there is nothing to change your mind about. The wall works,” he said.
The standoff between Trump and congressional Democrats over $5.7 billion in funding for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border has closed nine federal departments and still more agencies.
An estimated 800,000 federal employees, some of whom protested at the White House and Capitol on Thursday, will miss a paycheck as the 21-day shutdown is poised to enter its fourth week. The last pay date for those employees was Dec. 28, less than a week into the shutdown.
Without a resolution today, the gap in federal funding will surpass the one that led to the 1995-1996 shutdown, which resulted from an impasse between President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans that had nearly 300,000 federal workers furloughed. A shutdown did not occur and no employees were furloughed during the third-longest gap in federal funding, which lasted 17 days in 1978 under President Jimmy Carter.
Reports have surfaced of unhappy employees selling possessions online to make ends meet, and the Coast Guard was criticized for advising families to hold garage sales, sell items online, and baby-sit to cope with the shutdown. The Senate approved measures Thursday that would guarantee federal federal workers back pay once the shutdown ends.
As the Trump administration has tried to reclassify some government services as necessary to lessen the shutdown’s impact on Americans, at least one union representing federal workers, including those at Customs and Border Protection and the Internal Revenue Service, has filed suit over those plans that would have more of its members back at work without pay.
Trump is expected to hold another roundtable on border security later today.
