Country heads for another government shutdown amid tensions over Minneapolis

A partial government shutdown appears imminent after a budget bill failed in the Senate amid tensions between Democrats and Republicans over immigration measures. With the failure of the initiative, Democrats showed their outrage over the killing in Minneapolis of two people amid protests against immigration raids.

The failure to pass a six-bill spending package aimed at funding more than three-quarters of the federal government makes it nearly impossible to avoid a partial shutdown starting Saturday.

Still, Democrats and the White House were still frantically searching for a last-minute deal. Democrats had vowed to block the measure unless it would separate and renegotiate funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to include controls over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

For his part, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham argued that if Democrats want to change the DHS bill to place restrictions on ICE "to align them more with traditional law enforcement agencies, then I believe it would be right for me to insist that we get to the root cause of the problem, which would be ending sanctuary city policies."

"Therefore I want to put my Senate colleagues on notice that I would insist this new DHS package include ending sanctuary city policies forever — which is something the American people overwhelmingly support," Graham maintained.

If it comes, it would be the second shutdown - when funding for all or different areas of the government is temporarily frozen - since Trump took office again a year ago.

Lack of agreement

The situation left the chamber's 53 Republicans short on votes: they needed 60 wills to move the legislation toward final passage. A modest Republican rebellion joined the Democrats.

Now Washington is bracing for another disruptive shutdown of services at midnight Friday.

For their part, the Democrats have explained that they are willing to approve five of the six sections of the text, but they want to separate the last one - which concerns the DHS - to discuss the reforms they want to see implemented.

Since the House passed all six sections in a single block, separating DHS from the text would imply a de facto shutdown at midnight Friday into Saturday, since the lower chamber would have to vote again on the Senate-passed version.