Inside Dems' new gambit to win the DHS shutdown fight

• Many lawmakers also question whether keeping the agency shut down is meaningfully incentivizing the White House to negotiate in good faith on immigration enforcement reforms.
• "It's not forcing any change," said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). "In the meantime, we're making people hurt. The long lines, that can't make us more popular."
• "We're on the right side on ICE, but not on the rest."

Driving the news: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) announced in a letter to his members Monday that Democrats will file a discharge petition on a bill to fund TSA, FEMA, the Coast Guard and other non-immigration DHS agencies.

• Discharge petitions can be used to force votes on legislation opposed or ignored by the majority party's leadership. If one is signed by 218 members, it forces a vote.
• "I urge all members to join us as we press Republicans for an up-or-down vote on legislation to protect our hardworking federal civil servants," Jeffries wrote.

Between the lines: This plan would effectively end the DHS shutdown altogether.

• The White House has already been keeping ICE and CBP funded with the more than $100 billion made available to the agencies in the One Big, Beautiful Bill.
• Several Democrats told Axios that, if the White House doesn't cough up what they deem adequate reforms to immigration enforcement policy, Democrats are content to simply wash their hands of any culpability in alleged ICE abuses.
• "As they're terrorizing people ... we're not going to give them any more money, right? So that's where we're at," said one senior House Democrat, saying of the OBBB funds: "Spend it down."

What we're hearing: Jeffries and House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) made the case for the discharge petition at a closed-door Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday afternoon, according to lawmakers who were present.

• Jeffries argued that the plan "doesn't give up any leverage," said one House Democrat.
• He also said it has the potential to "reveal that the Republicans are willing to hold out on DHS in order to die on the hill of protecting the president's mass deportation campaign."

What they're saying: Most House Democrats who Axios spoke to on Tuesday said they plan to sign on to the discharge petition, including the chairs of its largest ideological caucuses.

• Said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the center-left New Democrat Coalition: "I'll be signing it tomorrow, I expect every one of my colleagues to sign it.
• Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) predicted "very broad buy-in" among Democrats, which he said, "puts the question to folks like [Texas Sen.] John Cornyn why and whether Republicans keep withholding TSA paychecks."
• Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), the co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, told Axios he also plans to sign on.

Reality check: Democrats need four Republican signatures to force a vote, and centrist Republicans say see no need to join the effort after the House repeatedly passed GOP bills to fund the whole department.

• Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) told Axios: "Democrats should do their jobs and not take thousands of federal workers as hostages."
• "The House has already passed full funding twice. The Senate needs to negotiate and figure out how to get 60 votes," said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.).
• Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Calif.), who left the GOP earlier this month, said he hasn't seen the discharge petition but will "take a look at it."

The intrigue: Some of Jeffries' members are also grumbling about the strategy, with one centrist House Democrat telling Axios the discharge petition "just seems like more of the same."

• "We're just chasing our tail here. I mean, like, it's good politics but it's not going to actually get DHS open and help the officers get their paychecks," the lawmaker said.
• This House Democrat said the party should "find a way forward" in negotiations with the White House.

The bottom line: To some top Democrats, those negotiations simply aren't looking promising enough to rely on.

• "There's been an unwillingness on the part of the administration to really take [this] serious," said DeLauro, who has been advocating this strategy of funding the non-immigration portions of DHS since before the shutdown.
• Homeland Security Committee ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told Axios: "We've kind of listed all our items, and at this point there's been no positive response to any of it."