Sen. Johnson hardens opposition to Dem DHS demands as shutdown looms

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., on Tuesday slammed Democrats for conditioning Homeland Security Department funding on a requirement that federal immigration agents must obtain judicial warrants to carry out key enforcement activities.

Johnson, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” called that proposal “completely unworkable.” But it’s Democrats’ top demand for funding DHS, which is set to lose funding by the week’s end if Congress can’t pass an appropriations bill.

Johnson said he hopes Congress can pass another stopgap measure to buy time, but suggested Democrats have been unreasonable in negotiations so far.

“They want to defund DHS just like they want to defund police,” Johnson said of his political opponents. DHS includes the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, whose deportation efforts have grown especially controversial after an aggressive surge in Minnesota stirred national unrest.

Democrats “want to make it almost impossible for ICE to do its job,” Johnson, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said.

“Of the 10 demands, probably the most obnoxious is they want to require judicial warrants, which is completely unworkable,” he said.

“Our immigration laws have always been enforced by the executive branch, through administrative law judges. We have, again, literally millions of cases that need to be adjudicated. Our Article Three courts simply can’t handle that, and Democrats know it,” Johnson said.

Democrats have rejected arguments that requiring judge-signed warrants to enter private property — as opposed to administrative warrants issued by federal agency officials — would overburden the system.

The White House sent a counterproposal to Democrats’ demands, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a statement late Monday called it “incomplete and insufficient.”

Johnson also defended ICE agents wearing masks and obscuring their faces, accusing Democrats of wanting extreme political activists to “dox” agents.

“Democrats want to make sure that ICE can’t use masks. Why is that? Because they want their activists to be able to dox them and put their families at risk.”

He warned that a shutdown would cause real harm, noting that the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Transportation Security Administration would be defunded if DHS appropriations lapsed. Other parts of the department are already funded through previous legislation.

“They’re really playing with fire here,” Johnson said.