The ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Would Pour Billions Into ICE’s Budget

Senate Republicans on Tuesday narrowly approved President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which would massively increase funding for federal immigration enforcement as the Trump Administration pursues an aggressive deportation agenda. The bill passed with Vice President J.D. Vance serving as a tie-breaker, sending the package to the House of Representatives. If the lower chamber passes it with no changes, it will go to Trump’s desk for his signature. Trump’s first response to the Senate vote: “music to my ears.” But, the package has drawn bipartisan pushback, and in its current form, would add nearly $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In terms of immigration, the bill stands to significantly expand the capabilities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).  ICE’s current annual budget is around $10 billion. Under the version of the bill that passed the Senate, the agency would receive an infusion of more than $100 billion through 2029: $45 billion for detention facilities, $46 billion for border wall operations in the U.S.-Mexico border and $14 billion for deportation operations. The agency, which currently has about 6,000 deportation officers, would also receive billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. The bill also creates a new minimum $100 fee for those seeking asylum (The fee was $1,000 in the House version.)  The appropriations come as Trump has sought to dramatically increase the arrest and deportation of migrants. In just a few short months under Trump,  ICE arrests have gone up 25%. In May, Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller says that ICE should be performing 3,000 arrests a day. It has struggled to reach those quotas amid overcrowded detention facilities and a backlog of cases in immigration courts. In a recent interview with TIME, Trump border czar Tom Homan said he would like to double the amount of bed space ICE has in detention from 50,000 to 100,000.  The Administration is working to build more facilities and has side-stepped the courts in some cases to ramp up deportations, drawing lawsuits. On Tuesday, as Senate Republicans were negotiating over the bill’s details ahead of a final vote, Trump flew to Florida to visit the state’s new federally funded  Alligator Alcatraz, a new migrant detention center deep in the Everglades that’s set to temporarily house migrants awaiting deportation.  Republican plans to surge ICE’s funding comes on the heels of protests in Los Angeles that spread around the country  in response to recent ICE raids and arrests in that city and elsewhere. Polls suggest a majority of Americans (54%) believe ICE operations have gone “too far.”  The protests spurred criticism of Trump’s use of the military and federal funds to quell public disapproval of these policies, after his Administration directed the California National Guard and the Marines to aid in protecting ICE operations. Under the legislation Republicans are working to pass, Trump’s capabilities to expand migrant arrests and deportations would only grow.