Katie Britt

President Donald Trump and Alabama U.S. Sen. Katie Britt are among the top Republicans expressing outrage at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for saying “nobody respects” two federal immigration enforcement agencies at the center of a partial government shutdown.

Schumer made the remark as the Senate debated, and eventually approved, the $70 billion Republican plan to fund U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for three years.

“America will see it, and more clearly tonight, where the Republicans are: not on the side of lowering costs, but on the side of masked agents occupying our streets. Where the heck are you?” Schumer said, addressing his Republican colleagues.

“America is crying out for relief from high costs and you’re here adding $140 billion to an agency that nobody – the two groups, Border Patrol and ICE – that nobody respects in this country.”

Trump demanded Schumer “immediately apologize to these great patriots.”

“Wow! Cryin’ Chuck Schumer just said, for the whole World to hear, that “NOBODY RESPECTS BORDER PATROL OR ICE.” That is one of the most egregious, incorrect, unpatriotic, and dangerous statements I have EVER heard from a “professional” politician," Trump said in a statement posted to his Truth Social account Thursday morning.

“HE MUST IMMEDIATELY APOLOGIZE TO THESE GREAT PATRIOTS, AND I MEAN NOW!”

Britt called Schumer’s statement “unconscionable.”

“ICE and CBP agents put their lives on the line every day to protect our homeland. To say that ‘nobody respects’ these brave men and women who raised their hands to serve is unconscionable,” Alabama’s junior senator tweeted.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Schumer’s former Republican Senate colleague, called the Democratic leader a “lying scumbag politician” and accused him of hypocrisy.

“Chuck Schumer -- no one respects you. The definition of a lying scumbag politician, that is you. You would be the definition if you Googled you right now,” Mullin said.

“He has a detail with him. How about he walks around these city streets without a detail? I wonder how safe he would feel.”

Democrats say any funding bill for the Homeland Security Department should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.

After federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But bipartisan negotiations went nowhere, and the DHS funding lapsed with no agreement on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.