Hi, welcome back to the Cato podcast. My name is Dominic Lett. I'm a budget policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and I'm joined by David Beer.

Hi, I'm David Beer. I'm the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute and the Sells Foundation Chair and Immigration Policy here at the Cato Institute.

Today we want to discuss the current government shutdown and the context and immigration policy surrounding it.

We're about 30 days into the government shutdown, which is a little unusual given the circumstances.

Shutdowns don't typically last this long, but also the shutdown isn't for the entire federal government.

It's just for the Department of Homeland Security or DHS.

Could you tell me a little bit about the background behind the shutdown, kind of why it occurred and what are the concerns that Democrats

have and why they're kind of refusing to negotiate with Republicans. Yeah. So, you know, I just back up

and say, look, we had a budget bill that funded the government for part of the fiscal year. There was already a brief

shutdown in the fall. Then there was agreement reached to extend the funding for the entire government.

And then really, it was the result of immigration operations in Minnesota, specifically, throughout the country, really, but Minneapolis was the focus of much of the attention of the public during the time that they were negotiating over the budget and whether, you know, how to proceed on

funding the government for the rest of the year. And what people saw in Minnesota was a lot

of government overreach, really an immigration enforcement and law enforcement operation

that seemed really untethered

to restraint and unaccountable. And that led to the demands from the Democrats to not fund

the Department of Homeland Security, and specifically immigration and customs enforcement

and border patrol until there were reforms put in place to protect the rights of Americans and

people in the United States. Really, that's what led to it. That's the backstory that the deal was made to extend funding for

all other departments, but for the Department of Homeland Security. And so that's what's led to the

standoff. And really, I would say both sides have a role to play in negotiations. I think Democrats have at least put forward a list of things that they would like to see in a deal to extend funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans haven't really responded to those

or essentially ruled them out entirely out of hand.

And so that's what's led to the impasse,

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