White House goes around Schumer, sends Homan to negotiate DHS deal directly with centrist Democrats

White House border czar Tom Homan sat down with a group of centrist Democratic senators at the Capitol on Thursday, meeting for more than an hour in a direct bid to reopen the Department of Homeland Security without routing the deal through Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer (NY).

Schumer was not in the room.

That's not an accident. It's a strategy. The White House has decided that the path to reopening DHS runs around the Democratic leader, not through him. And based on the early signals, the centrist Democrats who showed up seem at least willing to have the conversation their leadership has been slow-walking for weeks.

Who Was at the Table

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Maggie Hassan (NH), Angus King (ME), and Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Patty Murray (WA) all attended the meeting, The Hill reported. Homan emerged from a suite of offices just off the Capitol Rotunda and struck an optimistic tone.

"We need to get the government open and we're going to keep having discussions."

Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), the chair of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Committee, noted the significance of the meeting's very existence:

"This is the first time our Democratic colleagues have sat down with us and obviously I really appreciated Homan and his leadership in the room."

The first time. DHS funding lapsed on Feb. 14. It took weeks of a shutdown before Democratic senators would even sit across the table from the people trying to end it. Britt called it "the first step in the right direction."

Murray, for her part, told reporters the two sides remain "a long ways apart." She also did not support the deal that reopened the government after November's 43-day shutdown, which tells you something about where the Democratic caucus's internal fault lines run.

Why Schumer Got Bypassed

The White House's calculation is straightforward. Schumer has spearheaded negotiations over ICE and Customs and Border Protection reforms, but those negotiations have moved at a pace that suggests the Democratic leader is more comfortable with the shutdown as a political weapon than as a problem to solve.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (SD) laid out the timeline on Tuesday. It took Democrats 18 days to respond to a single White House offer. Democratic leaders only submitted their latest counteroffer on Monday night, after the shutdown had already been grinding on for weeks.

"The Democrats seem intent on dragging out this political issue."

Thune's assessment was blunt but earned by the facts. You don't take 18 days to respond to an offer when thousands of DHS employees are working without pay unless delay is part of the plan.

"You can't get there if you're not sitting down at the table."

So the White House found people willing to sit down.

The Democratic Divide

This isn't the first time centrist Democrats have broken with Schumer on government funding. Before Thanksgiving, eight Democratic caucus members, including King, broke ranks with their leadership to vote for a government funding bill, ending a shutdown that had dragged on for six weeks. A Senate Republican source indicated that negotiators believe they have a better chance of cutting a deal with seven or eight centrist Democrats than with Schumer's leadership team.

The Democratic demands center on a 10-point list that includes:

• Requirements that federal immigration officers obtain judicial warrants before entering a residence to make an apprehension
• Stronger rules requiring federal immigration officers to wear body cameras
• A ban on officers wearing masks during law enforcement operations

These are framed as "reforms," but they function as restrictions on immigration enforcement. Requiring judicial warrants for every residential apprehension would create a procedural bottleneck designed to slow ICE operations to a crawl. The body camera and mask provisions are cosmetic dressing on what is fundamentally a demand to make it harder to enforce immigration law.

Cortez Masto's statement, released through her office late Thursday afternoon, made the posture clear:

"Democrats have made their demands very clear. I'm glad that the White House is talking with us, but they have a lot of work to do. My colleagues and I are not going to vote for any deal that doesn't include real reforms on warrants, masks, training, and our other demands."

A Democratic source familiar with the talks insisted the White House wouldn't be able to "pick people off" from the caucus. But the fact that these senators showed up at all, without Schumer, suggests the picking has already begun.

Schumer's Problem Is Bigger Than DHS

The pressure on Schumer isn't just coming from across the aisle. It's coming from his own party's base. Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton said plainly that she would not support Schumer for another term as Democratic leader:

"I've made it clear that I would not support Chuck Schumer as leader of the Democratic caucus because I think right now what I'm hearing from voters all across the state of Illinois is that they are fed up. They're fed up with what's happening in Washington."

Stratton added that voters are "looking for fighters and not folders," which is the kind of rhetoric that sounds energizing until you realize it's being deployed to justify keeping the government shut down. Fighting, in this context, means refusing to negotiate. It means taking 18 days to return a phone call while DHS employees go without paychecks.

Schumer is caught between a progressive base that wants total resistance and a centrist flank that understands the political cost of an indefinite shutdown. The White House just drove a truck through that gap.

What Comes Next

Homan said the talks would continue. The centrist Democrats who attended haven't committed to anything, but they've committed to the process, which is more than Schumer's leadership team managed for weeks. The negotiating dynamic has shifted. Instead of one channel controlled by Democratic leadership, there are now two conversations happening, and only one of them includes people who seem interested in reaching an agreement.

The up-until-now negotiating team of Schumer, House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY), and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) may find their leverage diminishing if centrist senators start cutting separate deals. That's exactly what the White House is counting on.

Schumer built his strategy around unity. Thursday proved it has cracks.