Scoop: ICE already short $2 billion as Trump's immigration crackdown ramps up
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The agency charged with carrying out President Trump's mass deportation promises has warned Congress it is short a whopping $2 billion for this fiscal year, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) repeatedly has faced significant budget shortfalls in recent years. Trump's immigration plans — which include deporting "millions" of unauthorized immigrants — would rack up costs even more.
- Congress would send ICE an extra $500 million in the stop-gap spending bill that passed the House and is being debated in the Senate.
- But that wouldn't come close to covering the nearly $2 billion the agency told Congress it needs just to keep up the work it's doing through the end of September, two sources familiar with the communications told Axios.
- Add to that the expense of fully implementing Trump's plans —which will include hiring hundreds of people, more than doubling ICE detention space to 100,000 beds and adding many more planes for deportation flights.
Zoom in: Not all of that is addressed in the bill now before Congress, which means the additional money ICE says it needs is unlikely to land anytime soon.
- The Department of Homeland Security may have to pull money from its other agencies — such as FEMA or the Coast Guard — and direct it to ICE.
- A report from the Government Accountability Office on budgets from 2014 to 2023 found that ICE regularly overspent and had to grab funds from other agencies within DHS to cover its costs.
What they're saying: The spending plan now before Congress is "not going to be sufficient to be able to cover the entire need for what they're covering" at ICE, said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.).
- "Just the bed space alone becomes very significant. And to just be able to detain people for a couple of days while they're processing, and then to be able to move out flights ... is exceptionally expensive."
- "What we've been told is there would be a shortfall, a significant one, by the end of the year," said Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.).
- After Congress approves a temporary spending plan, Britt said, lawmakers will have to "make those adjustments moving forward in FY26 so we can continue the good work being done."
The big picture: Trump's executive orders and directives for ICE to ramp up arrests have contributed to significantly lowering the numbers of migrants crossing the southern border — and led to some high-profile criminal arrests for the administration to tout.
- Trump has leaned on the military to help DHS with some immigration enforcement, tapped the federal Bureau of Prisons and local governments to help detain more migrants, and is now looking to get help from the State Department.
- For weeks, Trump border czar Tom Homan has been telling reporters that immigration agencies would need more funds.
- The White House and DHS did not responded to requests for comment.
The intrigue: Congress is planning to provide tens of billions of more dollars for immigration efforts as part of a sweeping budget reconciliation package. Reconciliation allows the Senate to bypass the 60-vote filibuster.
- But that will take time, especially as lawmakers haggle over significant tax policy changes that also would be included in the bill.
- "While ICE backfills are well-intentioned and desperately needed, the clock is ticking on the [budget] reconciliation front. Every delay lets Biden's chaos fester," said RJ Hauman, founder of National Immigration Center for Enforcement, an organization that advocates for lowering immigration levels.
- "Whenever [ICE is] coming up against a period of budget negotiations, they tend to do this thing where they overspend so that they can justify an ever ballooning budget," said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, which opposes immigrant detention.
