While the Senate must clear a much more arduous 60-vote threshold to pass appropriations than the simple majority enjoyed by the House, there’s one practical reality that matters more than the messy math of ending what is now the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history.

That is, despite last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill securing almost $200 billion to fund Donald Trump’s deportation operations, this funding is allocated only to front-line law enforcement personnel at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Any government funding deal that excludes appropriations for ICE and CBP, even if it funds the rest of the Department of Homeland Security, will leave some 20,000 civilian employees at ICE and CBP unpaid.

The good fight for reconciliation

Senate Democrats have made clear that they will not vote to fund ICE and CBP again, an unprecedented abdication of Congress’s historic responsibility to keep the government funded on a bipartisan basis. This recalcitrance persists despite the fact that Republicans made extensive concessions, including a ban on deportations in supposedly sensitive locations such as schools and churches, a requirement that deportation agents identify........

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