With airports in chaos, Trump says no to potential DHS shutdown deal over SAVE

President Trump told Senate Majority Leader John Thune he wouldn't support an idea floated by aides to end the DHS shutdown and fund ICE later.

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 President Donald 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.