The Accelerated Growth of ICE under the Big Beautiful Bill
By: Carol Schwam Marques
Edited by: Chloe Shah and Hannah Becker
In July 2025, the House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which allocated around $170 billion to the Trump administration to expand its border and immigration enforcement. [1] This bill made Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the highest-funded US law enforcement agency, with $85 billion at its disposal. [2] According to NPR, the Trump administration expanded ICE funding and flexibility to fulfill its goal of deporting up to one million people each year. [3] ICE has historically been viewed as a largely unaccountable institution, and now, with this dramatic budget increase, it can operate with impunity and limited congressional oversight. [4]
Even though immigration oversight has always been a polarizing issue, this exaggerated increase in ICE’s power under the Big Beautiful Bill demonstrates a shift toward Congress’s approval of legislation that expands the executive branch’s authority. Similar to other policies passed by the Trump administration, the expansion of ICE is a clear example of the president consolidating power to fulfill his political goals.
Under the US Constitution, Congress considers and allocates funding for federal institutions. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its subagencies, like ICE and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are funded through congressional appropriations. [5] As explained by the American Immigration Council, the federal appropriations process has “an enormous impact on immigration and immigration enforcement,” as these bills determine the capacity, resources, and funding of immigration enforcement agencies. [6]
Although Congress explicitly holds spending power, the Trump administration has increasingly challenged its authority by asserting that the executive branch can decide how federal funds are spent. [7] Not only did the Big Beautiful Bill implicitly expand executive power, but it also broke tradition. According to NPR, ICE’s budget had been stable at around $10 billion for years. The new law, however, allocated an extra $75 billion to the agency on top of its base budget, which it has four years to spend. If the money is distributed evenly and this funding level persists, $29 billion would be available to the agency each year, effectively tripling its budget. [8]
To understand why this budget expansion matters, it is important to consider how ICE’s mission has changed over time. Congress created ICE through the 2003 Homeland Security Act, following the urgency to protect public safety and national security after the 9/11 attacks. At first, ICE’s mission was to protect the nation from high-risk individuals and focused on going after transnational crime. [9] Over the years, however, ICE’s role has shifted toward securing internal immigration enforcement, as seen in its growing detention capacity.
The Big Beautiful Bill allocates $45 billion for ICE to increase its detention centers, with the capacity to hold up to 100,000 people in custody per day. [10] In addition, as the agency’s budget increased, so did hiring, since ICE is looking to hire officers in at least 25 US cities, and such jobs offer significant signing bonuses and student loan repayment. [11]
This expansion has large consequences. In addition to increasing detention capacity and the number of personnel, the Trump administration’s harmful rhetoric has reframed immigrants as broad national-security and economic threats, helping justify a more aggressive enforcement agenda. According to the White House, under the Immigration and Nationality Act and Section 301 of Title 3 of the United States Code, President Trump has stated that illegal immigrants pose a national security threat and cost taxpayers several billion dollars. [12] As a result of the administration’s expanded capacity and rhetoric, enforcement priorities have shifted from high-risk individuals to low-risk or long-term noncitizens instead.
Previous administrations, including that of Obama, focused on immigration enforcement that dealt with individuals deemed to be high priorities, such as those who were recent entrants and a risk to public safety. But according to the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, the Trump administration has asserted that “all undocumented migrants were deemed priorities for apprehension and removal.” [13] As stated by the Department of Homeland Security in January 2026, the current administration and immigration enforcement agencies have celebrated the increase in detentions, arrests, and removals as a “record-breaking year.” [14] This shift matters because it redefines enforcement success not in terms of public safety, but in terms of volume. ICE, instead of focusing its power on targeted threats, has greater incentives to maximize its number of arrests. This not only increases executive discretion, but it also places low-risk noncitizens at greater risk of detention and removal.
Under the Trump administration and current DHS leadership, enforcement priorities have moved away from threat-based targeting. Instead, the agency has increasingly emphasized enforcement, encouraging officers to pursue large-scale goals with limited external constraints or accountability.
Since 2025, 32 people have died in ICE custody, according to Melissa Hellmann from The Guardian. [15] Tensions have only continued to escalate with the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, who are just two of the eight killed by ICE this year. [16] Furthermore, ICE agents operate with little to no transparency, wearing masks with no visible identification, driving unmarked cars, and wearing civilian clothes to detain people from courthouses, homes, work, on the street, and several other daily locations. [17] These patterns show that the expansion of ICE has not only increased the agency’s size but has also made its enforcement more opaque and more aggressive. In this sense, the agency’s growth has strengthened executive power while making accountability more difficult to maintain.
Still, Congress has yet to take any direct action against ICE. The branch has been locked by partisan conflict about the future of ICE and DHS funding, with a potential government shutdown approaching. According to NBC News, Democrats are pushing for restrictions on ICE, wanting agents to show identification, operate unmasked, steer away from churches and schools, and obtain judicial warrants to enter homes. Republicans, however, are claiming that these demands are unrealistic and want to reach a deal before the deadline of the DHS shutdown. [18]
The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has become a significant turning point in US immigration enforcement policy. By dramatically increasing the agency’s budget and operational capacity, the Trump administration has established a precedent that the executive branch has greater influence over Congress in shaping policy outcomes, enabling the pursuit of aggressive political agendas at an unrestrained scale. Although national security threats justified these measures, the agency’s recent violations have raised many concerns over its accountability and congressional oversight.
As ICE continues to act under the framework established by the Big Beautiful Bill, there is considerable uncertainty about the long-term implications for the rule of law and separation of powers. The question for the next few weeks is whether Congress will be able to reestablish its oversight role and act on future funding decisions, and what its relationship with the executive branch will be.
Notes
Juliana Kim, “How Trump’s tax cut and policy bill aims to ‘supercharge’ immigration enforcement,” NPR, 3 July 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/07/03/g-s1-75609/big-beautiful-bill-ice-funding-immigration
2. Bill Chappell, “How ICE grew to be the highest-funded US law enforcement agency,” NPR, 21 January 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump
3. Ibid.
4. Rosa Barrientos-Ferrer, Ben Greenho, & Silvia Mathema, “Congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act Creates an Unaccountable Slush Fund for the Trump Administration’s Deportation Force,” Center for American Progress, 19 September 2025, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/congressional-republicans-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-creates-an-unaccountable-slush-fund-for-the-trump-administrations-deportation-force/
5. American Immigration Council, “Government Funding Explained: The Appropriations Process & Immigration,” 8 September 2025, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/overview-government-funding-process-appropriations/
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Bill Chappell, “How ICE grew to be the highest-funded US law enforcement agency,” NPR, 21 January 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump
9. Chris Iorfida, “What is ICE and how has it changed during Trump’s 2nd term?” CBS News, 8 January 2026, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ice-history-trump-administration-9.7037733
10. Bill Chappell, “How ICE grew to be the highest-funded US law enforcement agency,” NPR, 21 January 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump
11. Ibid.
12. The White House, “Protecting the American People Against an Invasion,” Presidential Action, 20 January 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-american-people-against-invasion/
13. Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, “Comparison of the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administration Immigration Enforcement Priorities,” April 2021, https://leitf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Enforcement-Priorities-Memo.pdf
14. Department of Homeland Security, “DHS Sets the Stage for Another Historic, Record-Breaking Year Under President Trump,” 20 January 2026,
15. Melissa Hellmann, “Eight people have died in dealings with ICE so far in 2026. These are their stories,” The Guardian, 28 January 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/28/deaths-ice-2026-
16. Ibid.
17. Human Rights Watch, “US: Masked Federal Agents Undermine Rule of Law,” 18 December 2025, https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/12/18/us-masked-federal-agents-undermine-rule-of-law
18. Frank Thorp V, Sahil Kapur, & Julie Tsirkin, “‘An Impossibility’: Negotiations to reform ICE sputters as shutdown looms for DHS,” NBC News, 5 February 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/-impossibility-negotiations-reform-ice-sputter-shutdown-looms-dhs-rcna257552
Bibliography
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Kim, Juliana. “How Trump’s tax cut and policy bill aims to ‘supercharge’ immigration enforcement.” NPR, 3 July 2025.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/03/g-s1-75609/big-beautiful-bill-ice-funding-immigration
Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force. “Comparison of the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administration Immigration Enforcement Priorities.” April 2021. https://leitf.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Enforcement-Priorities-Memo.pdf
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Thorp V, Frank, Sahil Kapur, and Julie Tsirkin. “‘An Impossibility’: Negotiations to reform ICE sputters as shutdown looms for DHS.” NBC News, 5 February 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/-impossibility-negotiations-reform-ice-sputter-shutdown-looms-dhs-rcna257552