White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had a message for Democrats who voted against reopening the Department of Homeland Security during a 40-day shutdown.
“For the Democrats in Congress, the cruelty of this shutdown is the point,” Leavitt said.
At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, she told the story of a father of three who recently quit his job at the Transportation Security Administration for another job to feed his family. Nearly 500 Transportation Security Administration officers have resigned since the shutdown began, due to their paychecks being delayed.
Leavitt read a letter from the father: “I think the hardest thing is seeing the struggle that my wife was going through and not trying to bring more stress to her … but seeing her cry every night, how am I going to feed my family? How am I going to survive?”
Senate Democrats have demanded changes to immigration enforcement policy as a condition of funding the agency.
They sent a counteroffer on Wednesday to Republicans to reopen the department, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., quickly rejected the proposal.
“Our offer is a reasonable, good faith proposal that contains some of the very same asks Democrats have been talking about now for months,” Schumer said.
Democrats want “chaos,” Leavitt said on Wednesday.
“Democrats in Congress are forcing American travelers to wait in hours-long lines at airports across the country, robbing TSA officers and other federal workers of their hard earned paychecks that they use to feed their families,” Leavitt said, “and causing billions of dollars in damage to our economy.”
“They want to distract, I think, from the success of our military overseas right now,” she said, “totally obliterating the Iranian regime.”
As hundreds of TSA agents have resigned and thousands more have called in sick during the shutdown, President Donald Trump has deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to support security at airports.
“For all of the critics of this solution a few days ago when it was proposed by the resident, it is yielding results,” Leavitt said.
“Wait times have improved since ICE arrived, and they are doing everything in their power to help their fellow federal service members. But it’s important to take a step back and remember why is this even happening in the first place.”
“For nearly six weeks, Democrats in Congress have kept DHS shut down because they care more about illegal aliens than American citizens,” she continued.
“You have Democrat elected representatives in states across the country who are willing to inflict massive pain on their own constituents to fight for illegal aliens who broke our nation’s laws to come here.”
