What ICE’s big payday means for America

Republicans just gave US Immigration and Customs Enforcement a huge cash infusion, and President Donald Trump knows how he wants the agency to use it. 

During his first six months in office, the Trump administration was already using immigration enforcement to punish its political enemies and to advance a white-centric image of America. The Republican spending bill that Trump signed last week allocated $75 billion in additional funding to ICE over the next four years, allowing it to implement those tactics on an even grander scale.

That’s despite growing public opposition to Trump’s immigration policies and recent mass protests against workplace immigration raids in Los Angeles. 

There is a question of how quickly ICE can build up its infrastructure and personnel using its newfound resources. But just days after the bill passed, the administration made a show of force at Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park on Monday, with heavily armed immigration agents in tactical gear and military-style trucks showing up to arrest undocumented immigrants.

That may only be the beginning. ICE may not yet be able to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants in a single year — the goal that the Trump administration has privately set. 

However, the agency is already infringing on civil liberties under this administration in ways that should worry not just immigrants, but every American, said Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, a criminal justice reform advocacy group. 

“The tactics of this administration are sweeping and indiscriminate,” Kessler said. “The administration is continuing to widen the circle of people that they’re subjecting to criminalization, to detention, and to deportation. It’s happening in a way that is undermining due process and our fundamental values.”

What’s in the bill and what it means for America

The bill allocates $45 billion for immigration detention and $29.9 billion for enforcement and deportation activities. It represents the largest lump sum investment in immigration enforcement on US soil since 2003, when the Department of Homeland Security was created following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

With that money — a 308 percent annual increase over its 2024 budget — ICE will be able to increase its immigration detention capacity from 41,500 to 116,000 detainee beds.

So far, those beds have not been reserved only for those with a criminal background, despite Trump’s vow that he would focus on deporting the “worst of the worst.” As of June, about half of people in ICE detention had no criminal record, and only about a third had been convicted of a crime.

Under the current administration, there have already been reports of inhumane conditions at various immigration detention centers. In Florida, which has cooperated closely with federal immigration agents, detainees at Krome Detention Center in Miami recently gathered outside the prison to make a human SOS sign after they endured sleeping on the floor, being underfed, and not getting necessary medical attention.

The bill aims to incentivize state and local governments to follow Florida’s lead and collaborate with federal immigration authorities on detention, offering them $3.5 billion total in federal grants as a reward. Even some states and cities that previously adopted “sanctuary” policies — refusing to cooperate with ICE to detain immigrants — might not want to leave that money on the table, said Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group. 

That’s despite research showing that sanctuary policies make immigrants more likely to report crimes and are associated with decreases in crime rates.

The bill also grants ICE essentially a blank check for funding enforcement and deportation activities. Where the House version of the bill allocated specific amounts for particular enforcement purposes, such as transportation or removal operations, the version of the bill passed by the Senate and signed by the president does not specify any such guardrails. 

Trump has so far failed to come close to achieving what he promised would be “the largest deportation program in American history.” As Trump’s deportation numbers have lagged behind the modern record set by former President Barack Obama, he has resorted to deporting some of the easiest targets: people who show up to their obligatory check-ins with ICE officers after being released from immigration detention under a program for individuals deemed not to be a public safety threat. 

“Regardless of their background, regardless of whether they’re parents, regardless of whether they are working long-term jobs and supporting their community, they’re being swept up and facing inhumane detention and the prospect of permanent family separation and permanent separation from their communities and their jobs,” Kessler said. 

The obstacles Trump still faces

Nevertheless, even with these extra funds, it’s not clear if Trump’s vision for deporting millions of undocumented immigrants will become a reality. 

For one, it takes time to hire new immigration agents, sign cooperation agreements with local law enforcement agencies that facilitate the detention of immigrants, build new detention facilities, conduct immigration court proceedings, and charter deportation flights. There are countries that refuse to take their citizens back as deportees, although the administration is reportedly in talks with other countries to accept them instead.

Resistance from business owners who rely on immigrant workers also appears to have given Trump hesitation. He has repeatedly promised in the weeks since the LA raids to shield farmworkers and hospitality workers from deportation, especially now that his administration has stripped 3 million people of deportation protections such as parole and Temporary Protected Status.

“While this infusion of resources absolutely will help them get much more volume, I do think that we continue to see the administration and Trump himself realizing that it can’t be carte blanche, and that they need to make sure that American businesses aren’t destabilized,” Murray said.

For that reason, she said the increase in funding for deportation worries her less than the provisions in the bill that rapidly ramp up immigration detention, potentially too quickly to ensure humane treatment of those in custody. 

But she also said it’s “difficult to know 100 percent” what Trump will do.

“We can only expect that they’ll continue to target people attempting to comply with the law,” Kessler said. “They’ll continue to target people who are engaging in political speech that is disfavored by the administration. They will continue to threaten the security of US citizens for political reasons.”