Ricketts on the Senate Floor: Fund DHS and Keep Nebraskans Safe
WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) called on his Senate colleague to pass appropriations funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
“[DHS] funding runs out Friday at midnight,” said Ricketts. “And, if Democrats allow this to happen, it won’t impact ICE operations. But what it will do is interrupt FEMA. We just had a major winter storm on the East Coast and parts of the south FEMA will be interrupted if the Department of Homeland Security is not getting funded. Our TSA agents who help make sure we get around the country safely through our airports, they will stop getting paid. That could potentially lead to slowdowns at airports. The Coast Guard will stop getting paid — our heroes who keep us safe on our oceans and rescue us when we need it. These are all the things that Democrats will be putting at risk if they don’t fund Homeland Security.
Watch the video here.
TRANSCRIPT:
Senator Ricketts: “Mr. President,
“Over the last several weeks, we have witnessed some terrible tragedies in Minnesota that involved law enforcement operations and loss of life.
“We should all continue to pray for the families of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
“As a former governor, I know that when there’s an officer-involved shooting, there’s always an investigation to determine whether the shooting was justified.
“And there will indeed be multiple investigations into these shootings.
“I also know that, as a former governor — having had the State Patrol of Nebraska report to me — that our law enforcement officers are dedicated professionals, women and men who put their lives on the line to keep us safe, and they will do a great job for us in investigating what could be done better.
“And the Department of Homeland Security should take this opportunity to review its policies and procedures because of this investigation to determine if there are areas to improve upon.
“One of the areas I think they will find is that there could be better cooperation with the local law enforcement.
“However, this is not the fault of ICE or Customs and Border Protection.
“This is the fault of the mayor, who is not allowing his administration to work with ICE to, for example, apprehend criminal illegal aliens who are in their jails and forcing them to go out in the street to apprehend these folks.
“And they’re not providing the sort of crowd control that would allow protesters to exercise their rights and keep them safe and stop them from interfering with law enforcement operations.
“And so the Democrats are holding up the Department of Homeland Security bill.
“Ironically, because of the continuing resolution that we passed, we are funding ICE with more money than we would have otherwise, if we just passed the regular Homeland Security bill, because Republicans are working on fiscal restraint.
“Also, ironically, they actually can’t get at the agency they’re mad at.
“ICE is fully funded for the next three years because of the reconciliation bill we passed last year, and so Democrats really can’t impact the funding of the agency that they’re unhappy with.
“Now they’ve got various demands that they have with regard to this, and again, some of these demands are already addressed in the Homeland Security bill.
“For example, they want body cameras.
“There’s actually funding for body cameras in the homeland security bill, if the Democrats would join us in passing it.
“There’s also funding for de-escalation procedures.
“Presumably, Democrats would want that.
“There’s also funding for an inspector general.
“Presumably, Democrats would think that was a good idea.
“All these things are in the Homeland Security bill, the Democrats would just work with Republicans to pass it, but they’re not doing so.
“They have some demands like better cooperation with local law enforcement.
“Well, that’s something that we would like to that we’d like to see in sanctuary cities that are blocking our federal law enforcement officers from apprehending illegal immigrant criminals who are in their jails, work with us to be able to allow us to do that.
“That’d be great.
“I’m sure the ICE members are talking right now to say, are saying to themselves, so that cooperation be wonderful.
“In fact, that’s the key.
“I see it in my home state that our local law enforcement, our county sheriffs, they don’t do ICE’s job for them.
“But they do cooperate to be able to get criminal illegal aliens into the custody of ICE and also provide security to make sure that law enforcement is not interfered with, and that protesters can have their ability to exercise their rights in a safe way.
“One of the other demands that they have is for no masks.
“And again, talking to local law enforcement in Nebraska, and my own experience with Nebraska State Patrol.
“I know that typically, our law enforcement officers wear a name badge, but in special operations, that’s not always the case.
“We see that masks are necessary to protect the identities of our law enforcement officers.
“Far-left radical people are using face recognition software or can use that to identify law enforcement officials and then dox them, and that’s a risk.
“In fact, we’ve seen it in Nebraska.
“We had — talking to one of my county sheriffs about one of his deputies who was doxed his name and address, his children’s names were published on the internet and even going so far as to publish his parents’ name and address in a different city.
“This is just pure intimidation.
“I know that when we have drug and interdiction programs, we want our officers to wear masks, because, again, the cartels want to intimidate our law enforcement officers into not doing their jobs.
“And this is something we have to be worried about.
“If the left continues to villainize our law enforcement officers who are there to keep us safe, it will make the job less attractive.
“It will be harder for us to attract the right kind of people we want to be able to fill those positions in law enforcement.
“It is absolutely appropriate in certain circumstances to wear a mask, and in fact, in some operations, it’s a safety issue if we are having our law enforcement officers, for example, go into a residence where they know there’s a criminal and they use are using, say ordinance to do that, the mask actually helps protect them.
“So there are times and circumstances where that’s appropriate and certainly protecting our law enforcement officers from malicious actors who want to intimidate them is important.
“It’s time to make sure we’re keeping our law enforcement officers safe and making sure we continue to have people brave, women and men who want to step up and do that job.
“One of the other things that our Democrat colleagues want is to end administrative warrants.
“A little history: Administrative warrants were originally passed in the Immigration and Naturalization Act from 1952, so they’ve been around for nearly 75 years.
“Getting away from that would bring our law enforcement operations with regard to illegal immigrants in this country to a halt.
“This is an important way that we actually get to deport the people who are here illegally.
“So that’s a non-starter.
“We can’t slow down the system.
“Again, we just saw under the Biden administration an open border policy and 10.5 million illegal entry attempts into the United States.
“The President has now brought those down 95% and since April 2025 has stopped releasing illegal immigrants into our country.
“That’s progress, but I believe the President was hired to address the issue Joe Biden created.
“So, we need to give the right tools to our law enforcement officers to be successful.
“I encourage my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work with the White House and Senate Republicans to come up with a reasonable compromise based on common ground, and to make sure that we are funding Homeland Security.
“That funding runs out Friday at midnight.
“And, if Democrats allow this to happen, it won’t impact ICE operations.
“But what it will do is interrupt FEMA.
“We just had a major winter storm on the East Coast and parts of the south FEMA will be interrupted if the Department of Homeland Security is not getting funded.
“Our TSA agents who help make sure we get around the country safely through our airports, they will stop getting paid.
“That could potentially lead to slowdowns at airports.
“The Coast Guard will stop getting paid — our heroes who keep us safe on our oceans and rescue us when we need it.
“These are all the things that Democrats will be putting at risk if they don’t fund Homeland Security.
“And of course, any continuing resolution will just mean that the Democrats are funding ICE to a greater degree than they would otherwise.
“So again, I encourage my Senate, my Senate Democrat colleagues, to work with the White House and Senate Republicans on a reasonable compromise.”