ICE's cash crisis deepens amid immigration crackdown

• Lawmakers say ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is at risk of violating U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.
• That's added urgency to calls for Congress to pass Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," which could direct an extra $75 billion or so to ICE over the next five years.
• It's also led some lawmakers to accuse DHS and ICE of wasting money. "Trump's DHS is spending like drunken sailors," said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the DHS appropriations subcommittee.

Zoom in: ICE's funding crisis is being fueled by Trump's team demanding that agents arrest 3,000 immigrants a day — an unprecedented pace ICE is still trying to reach.

• Its detention facilities — about 41,000 beds — are far past capacity as DHS continues to seek more detention space in the U.S. and abroad.

The intrigue: If Trump's big bill isn't passed soon, he could use his authority to declare a national emergency to redirect money to ICE from elsewhere in the government — similar to what he did in 2020 to divert nearly $4 billion in Pentagon funds to his border wall project.

• "I have a feeling they're going to grant themselves an exception apportionment, use the life and safety exception, and just keep burning money," a former federal budget official told Axios.
• "You could imagine a new emergency declaration that pertains to interior enforcement that would trigger the same kind of emergency personnel mobilization statutes," said Chris Marisola, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center and a former lawyer for the Defense Department.
• "These statutory authorities authorizing the president to declare emergencies" ... unlock "a whole host of other authorities for these departments and agencies [that] are often written incredibly broadly and invest a lot of discretion in the president," Marisola added.

The White House has been trying to stretch its authority over the federal budget in various ways.

• Besides vastly overspending DHS's budget, Trump's Office of Management and Budget has stopped publicly disclosing the money it's dispersing across the government. The administration also has had other agencies hold up money Congress appropriated for various programs.

Driving the news: DHS recently shifted around almost $500 million within its accounts to help support its immigration operations. But the agency asked appropriators for at least $2 billion more to meet the agency's needs by the end of September, as Axios reported in March.

• Lawmakers who oversee DHS's appropriations say it could run out of money as soon as July, causing it to violate the Antideficiency Act.

• The law bans agencies from obligating or spending federal funds that haven't been approved by Congress. Agency officials theoretically could face criminal charges and fines for violations, but no one has been charged before.

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), the top Republican on the House's DHS appropriations subcommittee, expressed concern during a May hearing that DHS will break the law by overspending if it doesn't get help soon.

• "We're watching what goes on" with budget talks in the Senate, "because if there's much of a hiccup in that, those concerns are all capital 'C' concerns," Amodei (R-Nev.) told Axios.

What they're saying: "They are spending likely in the neighborhood of a billion dollars more at ICE than we authorized, and that's patently illegal," Murphy said. "They cannot invent money. They cannot print money. They don't have the money to spend that they're spending."

• "I hope it doesn't happen," Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), another member of the DHS subcommittee, said when asked whether the agency could reach the end of the fiscal year in violation of the Antideficiency Act. "I hope we'll get them some money by then."
• Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), the DHS subcommittee chair in that chamber, said it's a "work in progress" to get DHS the funding it needs to "make good on the promises to the American people."

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Axios that "Under Secretary [Kristi] Noem's leadership, DHS is rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and is reprioritizing appropriated dollars."

• "President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' is critical to ensure we have the funding to secure our homeland for generations and deliver on the American people's mandate for safety and security," McLaughlin said.