The Big Beautiful Bill Will Fund a Massive Increase in Immigration Enforcement
In all the discussion about the other problems with the Big Beautiful bill—the huge increase in debt, the huge cuts in Medicaid Spending, and the rollback of Clean Energy Investment, among others—one major feature of the Bill is not getting enough attention. The Bill will fund a massive increase in the budgets for both mass deportation efforts (largely to ICE) and border protection (including the building of the border wall). This spending totals $170.7 billion, including:
$45 billion to build new immigration detention centers, which is a 308% increase over ICE’s 2024 detention budget. Most of the funding would go to private contractors. Currently 50,000 people are detained so this increased capacity could mean the capacity to detain more than 200,000.
$27.9 billion to ICE for its enforcement and deportation operations, including funding to hire an additional 10,000 (!) ICE officers over the next five years. According to CATO, this would more than double the number of Enforcement and Removal Operation agents. The overall ICE budget would triple by 2028 and ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations would nearly quadruple.
$46.6 billion for border wall construction
Source: CATO
It is important to note that immigration and border enforcement is already two-thirds of total federal law enforcement spending. The Bill would make the ration even more extreme.
Even if you support increased enforcement of immigration laws, this massive increase is hard to justify.
First, is it really the case that additional law enforcement resources should be devoted to immigration, and not organized crime, drugs, street crime or fraud?
Second, it does not appear that there is public support for such a massive increase in spending. The American people are already questioning the current mass deportation efforts, and do not seem to want more. Several recent polls have shown that Americans already think that Trump has “gone too far” in his mass deportation efforts. For example, a PBS/NPR/Marist poll released yesterday revealed by 54% of all American adults had said deportation efforts had gone too far. Only 18% said that the efforts had not gone far enough. Julia Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute offered the best summary of this poll result: “It seems like folks are either saying ‘too far,’ or ‘stop here.’”
Third, given the the number of people trying to cross the border has plummeted, does a massive increase in border enforcement (including building a wall) really make sense. As this chart shows, the number of apprehensions at the border has dropped dramatically. This was not the result of any increased enforcement, but instead the result of Trump’s policy changes about the border. You can argue about the wisdom of these policy changes, but it suggests that massive new spending at the border is not a wise use of taxpayer dollars. Even the Wall Street Journal—in an Editorial otherwise supporting the Bill—thinks this is excessive: “The defense boost is also less than the bill’s $170 billion for homeland security and immigration enforcement, which is excessive given that border crossings are now at a trickle. The astonishing $45 billion for the border wall could be better spent on new weapons systems and ships.”
There are many reasons to oppose this Bill. The reckless increase in resources devoted to mass deportation efforts already opposed by the American people is yet one more reason to oppose the bill.