WASHINGTON — The government shut down largely because of a battle over immigration, specifically a program called DACA that protects people from deportation if they were brought here illegally as children. Although polls show that nearly 90 percent of Americans approve of that, Republicans in Congress have been hesitant to let it continue past March, when it is set to expire.

Democrats said they wouldn’t vote to avoid a shutdown unless the spending bill contained an extension of DACA, but Republicans didn’t budge, so the budget failed to pass. That happened Friday night; it’s unclear how long the shutdown might continue.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of Charlotte, who is one of the GOP’s more moderate voices on immigration, criticized his Democratic colleagues for not voting on the budget due to their immigration concerns. He said Congress still has several weeks left to debate DACA, so using it as leverage now was unwise.

“Since last year, I’ve been working on a solution that would provide long-term certainty for DACA recipients and effectively secure our borders once and for all,” Tillis said. “Even though we’re closer than ever to a deal and Congress has until March 5 to provide a solution for DACA youth, Democrats instead chose to create an arbitrary deadline to justify their decision to shut down the government. Their shutdown will not be helpful in getting a bipartisan deal to the President’s desk.”

But Democrats like G.K. Butterfield, who represents northeastern North Carolina, said Republicans “refused” to give Democrats any input on the spending bill and shouldn’t act surprised that most Democrats didn’t want to vote for it.

“Republicans continue to push a far-right agenda that favors the few at the expense of the many,” Butterfield wrote on Twitter. “But no one wins when our politics devolve to the point of a government shut down.”