The Trump administration fired back a counterproposal to Senate Democrats on Monday evening, and the central message landed with the subtlety of a closing door: judicial warrants for immigration enforcement are off the table.

Three people close to the administration made that clear in no uncertain terms. One described the Democrats' warrant demand as a "complete nonstarter for the White House." As reported by Politico, a GOP strategist who focuses on immigration laid out the fault line plainly:

"The judicial warrants are the key operational thing that [deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller and the crew do not want to budge on."

The clock is ticking. A partial government shutdown begins Saturday if Congress can't reach a deal by Friday night — and Republicans need at least seven Senate Democratic votes to prevent it. The details of the White House counterproposal haven't been shared publicly, but the contours of the fight are unmistakable.

What Democrats are actually asking for

The Democratic wish list reads less like a negotiating position and more like a blueprint for making immigration enforcement nearly impossible. Their proposals include:

• Requiring judicial warrants before federal agents enter private property
• Prohibiting federal immigration agents from wearing masks
• Requiring officers to display identification
• Restricting where agents can operate — barring enforcement near medical facilities, schools, childcare facilities, churches, polling places, courts, and other locations
• Splitting off ICE funding entirely

Republicans aren't entertaining the ICE funding gambit. And the location restrictions alone would effectively create a web of sanctuary zones across every American city. One person close to the administration connected the dots:

"When you start looking at all these places, start adding them up together, basically, you have to go to an open field in Iowa in order to be able to detain somebody. I don't want to say that that's totally closed to discussion, but certainly not in the way that that Schumer and Jeffries are demanding it."

That's the game. Stack enough "reasonable" restrictions, and you don't need to abolish ICE — you just make it unable to function.

The warrant question isn't closed.

Democrats have framed the judicial warrant demand as a basic civil liberties safeguard. The administration sees it as a legal fiction designed to paralyze enforcement at scale.

DHS General Counsel James Percival issued a statement last week defending the use of administrative warrants — warrants issued by the executive branch — to conduct arrests:

"This is consistent with broad judicial recognition that illegal aliens aren't entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens. It is also consistent with the Supreme Court's admonition that the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is whether the search or seizure is 'reasonable,' not whether it is supported by a judicial warrant."

Sen. Lindsey Graham put it in starker terms from the Oval Office last week:

"If we have to get a search warrant to get 15 million people out, [Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer's telling me he doesn't want them out. It's the most ridiculous idea."

Graham is right about the math, even if you quibble with the number. Requiring a judge to sign off on every immigration arrest would grind the system to a halt — which is, of course, the point. Democrats aren't proposing a procedural safeguard. They're proposing a de facto moratorium dressed up in constitutional language.

The Minneapolis shadow

The political backdrop for these negotiations is the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, Alex Pretti and Renee Good, by DHS agents in Minneapolis last month. Democrats believe the incident hands them leverage, and they're pressing that advantage hard.

Sen. Chris Murphy captured the Democratic posture:

"We need these roving patrols to end, we need the secret police to end and we need accountability. Are there different ways to get there? Of course, but I don't think we're going to settle for anything that's window dressing."

"Secret police." That's a United States senator describing federal law enforcement officers. The rhetoric tells you everything about where Democrats want this conversation to go — not toward accountability for a specific incident, but toward a wholesale delegitimization of immigration enforcement itself.

One person close to the administration noted that the White House has already de-escalated in Minnesota and secured concessions from local law enforcement in the process:

"They have already significantly de-escalated in Minnesota, and in doing so won some important concessions from local law enforcement agencies there. They are not going to want to make it any harder for ICE to do its job by creating new rights for deportable aliens and new red tape before they can take action against someone."

The deaths of Pretti and Good are a tragedy that deserves scrutiny. But leveraging that tragedy to handcuff an entire enforcement apparatus is a policy play, not a moral one.

Schumer's confidence, Jeffries's gamble

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke Monday before even reviewing the administration's counterproposal — which tells you how interested he is in its contents:

"We have no idea which of our proposals they will accept and which they will reject. And I will say Democrats offered exceedingly reasonable proposals and have the support of the American people. I'm not exaggerating."

He is, in fact, exaggerating. Polling consistently shows broad public support for immigration enforcement. Framing a judicial warrant requirement for every immigration arrest as the will of the American people requires a generous definition of both "reasonable" and "the American people."

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has ruled out his members supporting another DHS stopgap — a harder line than some Senate Democrats have drawn. That split matters. If Senate Democrats prove more willing to negotiate than their House counterparts, Jeffries risks becoming the man who shut down DHS to protect the right of illegal immigrants to demand a judge before being arrested.

The narrow path forward

Senate Majority Leader John Thune struck an even tone Monday, acknowledging the difficulty while signaling that talks haven't collapsed:

"It's hard to predict right now how this all plays out, but I do think at least that there's a good back-and-forth, and I think on substantive issues. So we'll see where it's going, but it's progress."

Even if a framework emerges, congressional aides estimate Congress would need at least a couple more weeks to get a deal to the President's desk. That means some kind of bridge — a stopgap or short-term extension — likely has to happen first. But Jeffries has already torched that option on the House side.

A White House spokesperson said the President hopes to keep the government open and that the administration has been working with both parties to resolve the issue. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt noted last week that any final decision rests with the President.

What this is really about

Strip away the procedural arguments and the constitutional window dressing, and the Democratic position reduces to a single proposition: make enforcement so difficult, so legally entangled, so hedged with restrictions that it becomes functionally optional. Judicial warrants. Location blackout zones. Mask bans and ID mandates expose agents to retaliation. Each proposal, taken alone, sounds modest. Stacked together, they build a wall — not on the border, but around every illegal immigrant in the country.

The administration isn't budging because it understands what's being asked. This isn't a negotiation over process. It's a fight over whether immigration law gets enforced at all.

Friday is three days away.