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Witness says Democrats 'reneged' on funding, urges three years of homeland security resources
Summary
A witness told Chairman Arrington that Democrats reneged on a funding deal, blamed a 76-day shutdown for hobbling homeland security operations, criticized state and local rhetoric about ICE, and urged three years of funding to prevent future shutdown leverage.
A witness testifying under Chairman Arrington said Democrats had "reneged" on a funding agreement and attributed a 76-day government shutdown to that action, arguing it left critical homeland security and enforcement functions unable to operate.
He said the shutdown prevented Coast Guard personnel from defending ports and limited the ability of U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) agents to staff critical posts, and he linked those gaps to broader public safety and border-security problems. "We didn't have our, uh, coast guardsmen to defend our ports against terrorist attacks," he said, and added that some agencies could not "man their posts so that our critical infrastructure wasn't hacked." Those descriptions were presented by the witness as characterization of the shutdown’s effects.
The witness blamed what he called "rogue cities and states" for refusing to work with federal law enforcement, saying some jurisdictions "would rather break the law and harbor people who have broken the law" than assist enforcement. He also cited public comments by state officials he described as incendiary—naming Gov. Tim Walz and Gov. J.B. Pritzker—and said some leaders and national figures had criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a characterization the witness said had made enforcement more difficult.
To address operational uncertainty, the witness said Republicans plan to provide resources to homeland security and law-enforcement functions for three years so those funds cannot be used as leverage in future shutdowns. "What we're also going to do is do it for three years so that Democrats can't use them as leverage," he said.
Those assertions were offered as the witness’s position during his testimony. The hearing record does not include independent verification of the claims about specific operational impacts or causation between rhetoric and enforcement outcomes.
