This is a Bluesky post directly replying to an article by the politico, in quotes is a direct quote from the article. The article itself is about the senate agreeing to end the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security which includes ICE, Customs and Border Protection and TSA. What has been approved is funding for cash for all of DHS except for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection. What the poster is focused on is the fact that ICE and CBP have left over money from last year even if they aren't receiving funding for this year.
It goes without saying that the primary source is the political article itself. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/27/senate-dhs-funding-deal-00847949?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky. In a relatively concise article it has explained the situation clearly and simply, which allows the regular reader to grasp the situation. The article includes both sides of the senate, both republican and democratic and talking to the Senate Majority chair holders on both sides, as well as giving a sense of time as new updates come out and the impact those hold.
Another primary source I looked at is from the Cato Institute (https://www.cato.org/blog/heres-how-administration-plans-spend-largest-immigration-enforcement-funding-surge-history ). It directly reports on how democrats are withholding funding from ICE and CBP, and how they are still operating with the help of the funding they received last year. Last year they received seven times ICE’s annual budget and four times CBP’s typical annual budget, a whopping $190 billion in OBBBA funds allocated to DHS. The writer in the article roughly estimates that “the administration has released $114 billion of $191 billion in available OBBBA funds for DHS to spend—including $33 billion to ICE and $56 billion to CBP—with roughly $77 billion still available for apportionment.” With this we notice the lack of transcendency in the use of funding, with this Congress cannot conduct oversight, course-correct, or deter the misuse of funding. The article is very interesting and insightful as it breaks everything down into numbers as we’re talking about budget and funding, however many of it is estimates (with research) which circles us back about transparency.
Both of my primary sources are unbiased, and seem to gather information and statements from both sides such as the politico article. From the Cato Institute, they are focused on the numbers, with being left leaning in their explanations but overall they break down multiple charts of numbers.
Additionally I looked at other websites (which had clear biases which is why they're not listed), and the information across them is the same, however the numbers are all over the place. It seems that no one source agrees on that.
Evidence to support this claim, which is that even if funding is cut for ICE and CBP, they can still operate on the remaining budget from last year. This is true yes, while the numbers aren't exact everywhere, it is an agreed statement that they received a large budget last year and that funding is enough to sustain them for this year.
At the moment I haven’t received a reply from the user of the post, but some additional information about the user, they run their own independent news website and are journalists, immediately it is seen that they are very left leaning (if you couldn't tell by the sarcastic post anyways.)
