US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that a deal has been reached to end the shutdown, which has been going on for 35 days, and reopen the federal government.
Under the deal, government will reopen for three weeks until February 15 while negotiations between Republicans and Democrats will be held in an attempt to reach an agreement on border security.
The deal includes no money for Trump’s wall along the US-Mexico border.
Trump said he will ask Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to immediately put forward to a vote a proposal to reopen the government.
Trump said he has a "very powerful alternative" — an apparent reference to his threats to declare a national emergency in order to fund the border wall — but said he was "not going to use it."
The partial government shutdown was the result of Republicans and Democrats being unable to come to an agreement over Trump’s demand for funding for a well along the US-Mexico border.
On January 8, Trump gave an address to the nation from the Oval Office, in which he explained his reasoning for demanding a wall along the border with Mexico.
He explained that the US could no longer accommodate immigrants who enter the country illegally and warned of “a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border”.
The wall, said Trump, would cost $5.7 billion and “at the request of Democrats, it will be a steel barrier and not a concrete wall.” The President insisted “the border wall would very quickly pay for itself.”
Last week, Trump offered Democrats a compromise package on immigration in an effort to end the shutdown.
The President announced that he was prepared to back a three-year extension of protections for 700,000 immigrants who came to the country illegally as children and were shielded from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This, in exchange for the $5.7 billion he has requested for a barrier on the southern border with Mexico.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi immediately rejected the proposal, calling it a “non-starter”.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)