CBP asks judge for more time to work on tariff refunds
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection logo is displayed on the side of a patrol boat on September 26, 2025, in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A Customs and Border Protection official on Friday told a federal judge that the agency does not have the technology or manpower to immediately process $166 billion in tariff refunds, arguing the process would distract from its role addressing “imminent threats to national security.”
In a sworn filing, the official said that CBP needs an additional 45 days to create a system to process refunds for the more than 53 million entries related to the unlawful tariffs.
“CBP has never been ordered to, nor has it attempted to, process a volume of refunds anywhere near the volume of total entries and Entry Summary lines on which IEEPA duties have been deposited,” wrote Brandon Lord, the executive director of CBP’s Trade Programs Directorate.
The disclosure comes two days after a judge from the Court of International Trade initially ordered the Trump administration to remove the tariffs from its backlog of import paperwork. Even though the liquidation process — when the agency finalizes a tariff payment after goods enter the country — is largely automated and the Supreme Court overturned the tariffs two weeks ago, Lord said that Customs and Border Protection “is not able to comply” with the court’s order.
“CBP is now facing an unprecedented volume of refunds. Its existing administrative procedures and technology are not well suited to a task of this scale and will require manual work that will prevent personnel from fully carrying out the agency’s trade enforcement mission,” Lord said.
According to Lord, the current system used to process tariffs cannot handle the volume of refund requests, and that doing so manually would take resources away from “responsibilities that serve to mitigate imminent threats to national security and economic security.”
Following a hearing on Friday related to the refund process, which was closed to the public, Judge Richard Eaton of the Court of International Trade suspended his earlier order to immediately begin recalculating tariffs dues.
By lifting his initial order, the judge appears to be making room for the refund process to play out, though the exact timeline of refunds remains unclear.
During previous hearings, the judge had expressed skepticism that the refund process would be a “mess” or that the government lacked the resources to issue refunds.
Lindsey Halligan, attorney for US President Donald Trump, holds ceremonial proclamations to be signed by US President Donald Trump, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 6, 2025. Trump exempted Canadian goods covered by the North American trade agreement known as USMCA from his 25% tariffs, offering major reprieves to the US’s two largest trading partners. (Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance announced Tuesday that the couple is expecting their fourth child.
“We’re very happy to share some exciting news. Our family is growing!” Usha Vance wrote in the post on social media.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) (R) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) hold a press conference on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding at the U.S. Capitol on February 04, 2026 in Washington, DC. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — With just a few days until a Friday deadline to fund the Department of Homeland Security, Republican and Democratic lawmakers still appear to be at an impasse on how to move forward with Democrats’ demands for new restrictions on President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats delivered proposed legislative text that reflects their 10-item list of demands to Republican leadership over the weekend. The GOP presented a counterproposal, which Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said they rejected Monday night.
Details of the GOP counteroffer have not been made public, but according to Democrats, it didn’t include “details” or “legislative text.”
“The initial GOP response is both incomplete and insufficient in terms of addressing the concerns Americans have about ICE’s lawless conduct. Democrats await additional detail and text,” Schumer and Jeffries said in the statement.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune would not provide details on the GOP offer when asked by reporters on Tuesday.
“I think both sides are right now trying — other than it sounds like the Democrats up here are talking about it — are trying to keep the conversations moving forward and not litigating that in public,” Thune said.
The negotiations are coming as another partial government shutdown looms. If a DHS funding solution is not reached and passed in both chambers by the end of the day Friday, DHS would then shut down.
The TSA, Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Secret Service, CISA and FEMA would be impacted even though lawmakers’ focus is on Immigration and Customs Enforcement reform. ICE operations would not be impacted after it received $75 billion in separate funding from the already-passed “Big Beautiful Bill.”
In a letter last week to Republican leaders, Jeffries and Schumer laid out 10 key demands from Democrats on DHS funding, including calling for judicial warrants before agents can enter private property, a ban on ICE agents wearing face masks, requiring the use of body cameras and new laws for use-of-force standards.
Schumer has called Democrats’ demands “exceedingly reasonable.”
“We are asking ICE to do nothing more than follow the standards that the vast majority of law enforcement agencies already follow. Why should ICE be different, especially when they have such a record of brutality?” Schumer said.
The funding fight over DHS erupted in the aftermath of the death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, who was killed in a shooting involving federal law enforcement in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. Renee Good, a mother of three, was fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.
Earlier Monday, Thune said on the Senate floor that Democrats engaged in “meaningful talks” with the White House on a path forward for funding DHS over the weekend.
“Democrats have made their demands known in detail. Some of them are positive starting points for further discussions; others are non-staters and unnecessarily tie the hands of law enforcement,” Thune said on the Senate floor.
But Thune said Republicans, in conjunction with the White House, will seek demands of their own.
“I expect that the Trump administration, with the full backing of congressional Republicans, will continue to resist any effort to make it harder for law enforcement to detain and deport dangerous illegal aliens, which is what many of the Democrats demands would do, and I expect that the administration — again with the backing of Republicans here in Congress — will insist on reforms of its own,” Thune said.
As negotiations continue behind the scenes, Thune said on Monday that lawmakers will likely need more time to complete their work. He urged Democrats to support a stopgap funding proposal to keep the lights on at DHS while they continue discussions on ICE reform.
“We are just a few days away from the deadline that Democrats chose,” Thune said. “And it’s very possible we won’t have our work finished by then. If Democrats are serious about finding a solution there, they may need to find more time to bring these efforts to a productive conclusion.”
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn before boarding Marine One at the White House on January 16, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — From the campaign trail to Capitol Hill, a growing number of Democrats have said they believe President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses in his first year back in office.
But with their focus on the midterms, fewer elected Democrats are willing to commit to impeaching Trump if they win back control of the House, given likely Republican control of the Senate and potential for backlash from voters.
Trump has predicted that Democrats will impeach him if they retake the House, and Republicans plan to make that threat a key piece of their midterm messaging.
“They will do anything to stop the Trump agenda,” Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said of Democrats. “People, if they don’t want a two-year president, who they voted for pretty overwhelmingly in 2024, can’t allow the House to flip.”
Instead, many Democrats said they are focusing on the cost of living and the state of the economy.
“There’s a lot for me to be concerned about,” said Rep. Eugene Vindman, a Democrat from Virginia.
Vindman is an Army veteran and former national security official who played a role in raising concerns about Trump’s 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the center of his first impeachment.
“The American people are concerned about costs, and meanwhile, the president is pursuing foreign adventures,” Vindman told ABC News.
Impeachment calls have picked up in 2026 amid the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump’s perceived opponents. A number of progressive Democrats from liberal districts and candidates in crowded blue-seat primaries have called for the impeachment of Trump and key cabinet officials.
Democrats are also setting their sights on Cabinet officials: More than 80 Democrats have cosponsored Illinois Democrat Rep. Robin Kelly’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following the deployment of federal agents to Minnesota and the killing of a Minneapolis woman by a federal agent.
Still, Democratic leaders are moving cautiously ahead of the midterms, when they will need to gain at least three seats to win control of Congress.
“If candidates and members of Congress are not relentlessly focusing on people’s everyday lives, they are making a mistake,” former Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos, who led the House Democrats’ campaign committee, told ABC News.
“There’s so much of what President Trump has done, is doing, will do that can be labeled ‘impeachable offenses,’ but in the end what good is it going to do? Even if the House has the votes, the Senate will not go along with it,” she said.
The House has already rejected two impeachment pushes from Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas. In June, 128 Democrats voted with Republicans to block his charges over the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities without approval from Congress.
In December, just 23 Democrats voted with Republicans to kill a second effort focused on Trump’s comments about Democrats who posted a social media video urging service members to refuse illegal orders, while another 47 voted present.
In a statement after that vote, House Democratic leaders called impeachment a “sacred constitutional vehicle” requiring a “comprehensive investigative process” that had not taken place.
“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar and Katherine Clark said, arguing that voting “present” allowed them to “continue our fight to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said there’s “definitely a rising clamor for impeachment.”
“Of course, it requires a majority vote of the House to get there, but we need a structured method of thinking through all the lawlessness and criminality taking place,” Raskin said.
Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old activist who is running for Congress in Illinois, has argued that Democratic leaders need to “grow a f—ing spine,” and do more to challenge the Trump administration.
She has spoken out and protested against ICE activities in Chicago, and has pleaded not guilty to charges that she interfered with law enforcement during a protest outside an ICE facility in Illinois last fall that went viral on social media.
“One of the most critical failures in American politics is how our leaders have instilled this feeling that we shouldn’t fight for the world we want to see, that we shouldn’t take measures towards a future that we want to live in,” she told ABC News.
“Impeachment is just another tool in the accountability machine that’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t,” she said.
Raskin, who would lead impeachment proceedings in a Democratic House, said he would be “moving very quickly” in the next two months on “announcing a systematic way of thinking” about the various actions of the Trump administration that Democrats find objectionable, and potentially worth investigating.
