ZAPATA, TEXAS — Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar joined six other House Democrats who voted to fund the Department of Homeland Security in an appropriations bill he helped negotiate. He stands by his vote but is now fuming at the Senate Democrats who helped craft the package, saying they threw appropriators “under the bus.”
“In order to come up with an agreement, you need four corners,” he told NOTUS in an exclusive interview in South Texas. “I don’t want to be critical of the Senate. They did throw us under the bus. You can quote me on that.”
Cuellar said the killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota caused Senate Democrats to abandon DHS reforms he helped get added to the bill and change their position. “We said we’re going to move forward. Then the second shooting came and then the Senate said, ‘Oh no, no, no, no.’ Now I stood to that agreement, and I didn’t like – I wanted more things added to it.”
Senate Democrats are on Capitol Hill working at the 11th hour to try to come up with a plan that would prevent a government shutdown and add reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
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Cuellar, alongside six other centrist Democrats, voted to fund the DHS appropriations bill last week before the news that Pretti, a protester in Minneapolis, was shot and killed by CBP agents on Saturday. The incident resulted in fury from Senate Democrats over the weekend as they vowed they would block the DHS appropriations bill unless it included additional guardrails for enforcement operations.
Some of the House Democrats have said they regret their vote to fund the bill after the Minneapolis shooting, including New York Democrat Rep. Tom Suozzi, who posted on Facebook that he “failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis.”
But Cuellar’s district, a predominantly Latino border district, has up to thousands of border agents whose jobs are funded by the DHS appropriations bill. As the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Cuellar negotiated with Republicans on the legislation that would fund DHS — and he said they were able to include some guardrails for ICE in the bill that passed the House last week, even if it wasn’t what he saw as enough.
Cuellar is again a top target for Republicans in the 2026 midterms and is rejecting calls from the left of his party to do away with federal immigration enforcement efforts. “I disagree with abolishing ICE. I disagree with defunding ICE,” Cuellar said. “I agree on oversight and putting (guardrails) on them.”
He said he endorses a potential stopgap funding measure for DHS that is currently being negotiated in the Senate, adding he’s interested in more time to add additional reforms to the legislation.
“I agree with that,” he told NOTUS.
When it comes to the growing number of House Democrats joining the efforts to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem — fellow South Texan Democrat Vicente Gonzalez signed on as a cosponsor – Cuellar said he is leaning toward supporting but wants to see some changes in the articles.
“I’ve talked to leadership, they need to make some changes,” Cuellar said. “But I’m certainly leaning yes.”
Cuellar was unexpectedly pardoned by President Donald Trump in December, a year after he was charged with bribery and acting as a foreign agent.
Trump, who accused the Biden administration of weaponizing “the Justice System against their Political Opponents,” also pardoned the congressman’s wife, Imelda Cuellar.
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