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The US Senate passed a compromise spending package on Friday, clearing a path for Congress to avert a costly government shutdown amid a battle in Washington over changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.
The 71-29 vote on Friday evening paves the way for the federal government to be funded until the end of September once it is passed by the House of Representatives.
But the House is not due to return to Washington until early next week, meaning a partial government shutdown is set to start this weekend.
Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, called on affected agencies to execute plans for an orderly shutdown in a letter dated Friday.
The vote came one day after Senate Democrats struck a deal with Republican lawmakers and the White House to avoid a shutdown. The agreement gives Congress another two weeks to keep negotiating over proposed changes to rein in the White House’s immigration enforcement tactics following the death of two protesters in Minnesota in recent weeks.
The deal announced on Thursday separated funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border protection and immigration enforcement, from a broader US government funding package and maintained the department’s funds at current levels until February 13 while negotiations continue.
Senate Democrats had refused to sign on to additional funding for DHS without securing reforms to immigration enforcement amid public outrage over the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last weekend, by federal immigration agents.
Pretti’s death came less than three weeks after the killing by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Both killings sparked outcry in Minnesota and across the country, prompting the White House to shift its strategy and Democratic lawmakers to demand changes to how the administration carries out its mass deportation agenda.
After DHS secretary Kristi Noem last weekend accused Pretti of being a domestic terrorist, the White House sought to distance Donald Trump from her comments.
The president later announced he was sending his border tsar Tom Homan to Minneapolis in a move that was widely seen as a rebuke of Noem and Gregory Bovino, the divisive top border control official in the city.
Homan on Thursday said federal officials were working on a plan to “draw down” the number of ICE agents in Minnesota if state officials granted access to local jails. In another notable shift, US deputy attorney-general Todd Blanche announced on Friday that the Department of Justice had opened a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s death.
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