AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The money faucet was turned off at the Department of Homeland Security last week. Congress failed to negotiate a new budget to fund it. Here to walk us through it is NPR's immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo.
Ximena, welcome to the program.
XIMENA BUSTILLO, BYLINE: Hi.
RASCOE: How long could it take before the Department of Homeland Security gets funding restored?
BUSTILLO: At least a week, probably longer. The Senate and House are both on recess all next week. And when lawmakers left town on Thursday, they were just not close to a deal. The sticking point was making changes to how immigration officers operate. Republicans wanted to pass another two-week extension to funding, but Democrats did not support it.
RASCOE: How is DHS' budget actually affected? It seems like they have a whole bunch of money to keep working.
BUSTILLO: It's like living off of your savings without a paycheck. That's a mild oversimplification. So remember, we're talking about two different pots of money. One is essentially billions that they can use now, so that's money Congress gave the agency last summer. The other is the one that they lost. So the baseline annual funding that they get every year. Now, the funding Republicans passed last summer does mean that impacts of the shutdown are felt less widely inside the agency. More workers may be getting paid who otherwise would have been working without pay during a shutdown. And that's what we saw happen during the last shutdown when the agency kept paychecks flowing for immigration and customs enforcement officers and border patrol agents.
RASCOE: Immigration enforcement around the country is going to go on as planned?
BUSTILLO: Yes. The heads of the three immigration agencies testified before Congress this week, and they confirmed that their agencies would be mostly uninterrupted. So that's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. And, of course, things like processing immigration applications at USCIS, like green cards, is going to continue to happen since that agency is funded by fees. But there are some programs at risk of stopping. During the last shutdown, the office that investigates immigration detention conditions and deaths was not working, and five people died in custody during that time.
RASCOE: So potentially less oversight. You mentioned that the heads of immigration agencies testified before Congress this week. What else did we learn?
BUSTILLO: Acting ICE director Todd Lyons said over the last year, ICE conducted 37 investigations into officers' use of force. Of those, 19 are still pending or referred for further investigation, he said. Now, Lyons did not say whether any investigations have resulted in terminations. And that was notable because it's the first time that we had any insight into how the agency was overseeing use of force. Separately, the heads of ICE and the Customs and Border Protection both distanced themselves from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's claim that 37-year-old Alex Pretti was a domestic terrorist. Pretti was shot by two border patrol agents in Minneapolis. Here's how Lyons and CBP commissioner Rodney Scott responded to questions from Democratic senator Gary Peters about her comments.
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GARY PETERS: Would she possibly come to that kind of conclusion to tell the American public that when they're watching this video?
RODNEY SCOTT: I can't speculate on what someone else would say or why, Sir.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Mr. Lyons?
TODD LYONS: Sir, I can't speculate to what the secretary thought at that time, Sir.
BUSTILLO: So there have been a lot of questions about how DHS and the Justice Department are handling the investigations into those shootings because of those early judgment calls.
RASCOE: And a lot of questions about how immigration officers are trained on use of force, how did the head of ICE respond?
BUSTILLO: Lyons said that the training for the new recruits had gone from 75 days to 42 days, and that allowed for a longer, quote, "on-the-job training." He said that it was possible that someone who had never held a weapon before could soon be on the ground in a state like Minnesota after those 42 days. Now, it's important to remember that the officers who were involved in the two shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis were not recently recruited and had been with their agencies for years.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Ximena Bustillo. Thank you so much.
BUSTILLO: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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