WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators reached a tentative deal to avert a second government shutdown — but $9 billion that California is seeking for wildfire relief isn’t part of it.

Lawmakers announced an agreement in principle late Monday to end a funding standoff that would give some money for barrier construction along the U.S-Mexico border, though far less than President Trump has demanded for his wall.

But negotiators couldn’t reach a deal on federal disaster relief for California, other states and Puerto Rico, leaving wildfire victims reeling from the past two years’ devastating blazes in limbo.

Two Democratic sources close to the negotiations say Republicans objected to more funding for Puerto Rico as it continues to recover from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017. Democrats won’t move forward on relief without it.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, denied there was controversy holding up disaster relief, which is often tacked on to government funding bills such as the shutdown deal.

“We didn’t want to load it up with other things, because you put one thing in it, then you got another,” Shelby said. He said a disaster bill would be done separately.

“I think we’ll get it sooner than later, the sooner the better,” he said.

California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, another member of the Appropriations Committee, said relief will get passed “one way or another.”

“We just lost 15,000 homes, burned down, in the worst wildfire in California history,” she said. “So that’s a disaster, and we will get disaster funding done, so I’m not worried about that.”

But must-pass funding legislation is often the best vehicle for disaster relief packages, and some lawmakers were skeptical about the fate of disaster relief.

“I know they’re trying to cobble together the best deal they can, and once they got to where they could get as much as they could get, they just did it,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. “They said they’re coming right back with a bill that would do (disaster relief), but seeing is believing.”

The news comes as the White House is reportedly again considering diverting money from California flood control projects and disaster relief, along with hurricane aid for Puerto Rico, to pay for more wall projects without congressional approval.

In January, in the midst of a 35-day partial government shutdown over whether to fund Trump’s wall, The Chronicle obtained a document showing that the White House was looking at nearly $2.5 billion allocated for California projects being worked on by the Army Corps of Engineers as possible wall funding sources.

The projects included $177 million for building up levees and converting 3,000 acres of former salt ponds in the South Bay back into marshlands, and a nearly $1.6 billion flood control project on the American River in the Sacramento area.

At the time, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said there were “no plans to take money from disaster relief funding to pay for any potential projects.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on reports of renewed interest.

However, Trump himself suggested that he might yet tap the money, telling reporters at the White House that he was “adding things to” the government funding deal.

“We’re supplementing things and moving things around and we’re doing things that are fantastic, taking from far less important areas, and the bottom line is we’re building a lot of wall,” Trump said, without specifying any funding areas.

In an effort to prevent Trump from diverting the funds, Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove (Sacramento County), introduced a bill Tuesday that would repeal authority for the president to divert Army Corps money.

“Taking recovery funds from disaster victims as ransom for a border wall would be a new low, even for this president,” Garamendi said in a statement. “No president has ever raided disaster-recovery funds, and we should not allow President Trump to be the first.”

Lawmakers have said for months that they intend to approve money to help victims of the California wildfires and disasters elsewhere. But amid the prolonged standoff over Trump’s insistence on $5.7 billion for his border wall, relief has fallen by the wayside.

The Democratic-controlled House passed a $12 billion relief package in January, but it failed to advance in the Republican-run Senate, which was rejecting any measures that Trump did not explicitly endorse. Last year, then-Gov. Jerry Brown requested $9 billion for 2018 and 2017 wildfire recovery.

Since the shutdown ended Jan. 25, lawmakers have been in intense negotiations to reach a long-term compromise that would fund the Department of Homeland Security and the other agencies caught up in the spending impasse. Those have been largely held up by sticking points on border security — namely, whether to build any new barriers along the southern border and how many resources to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement to arrest undocumented immigrants within the U.S.

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, said she had not heard of any major disagreement on disaster funding during the negotiations, but that all the focus had been on the border-related disputes.

“Once we get through this crisis, we’ll hopefully have some consensus,” Roybal-Allard said.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan