Budget reconciliation package includes $45 Billion for ICE detention

This week, the House of Representatives released details on its proposed budget for immigration enforcement, including $45 billion for detention through FY 2029, an increase of over 300% from the current budget.

“Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence,” said Barbara Jordan. “Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.”

Many an administration has declared that they can’t do more to require inadmissible aliens to leave because they lack the detention space. Few of those administrations, however, asked Congress to adequately fund detention.

Prior administrations have also been hamstrung by a lack of available human resources to credibly enforce immigration in the interior. The New York City police department has more officers to protect and serve a single U.S. city than Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employs to cover the entire country. This budget reconciliation package includes $8 Billion to hire new ICE agents.

As one critic of immigration enforcement put it, “if Congress authorizes funding to this level, it would make ICE one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the entire nation (and likely the highest-funded) and allow them to detain far more than 100,000 people at any given time.”

Before the April recess, the House passed a budget resolution framework that included $175 BILLION for immigration enforcement. The resolution instructed committees to fill in that framework. The House Homeland Security Committee and the House Judiciary Committee were responsible for the bulk of that work, and they returned this week with roughly $150 BILLION designated for specific areas.

Highlights from the House Judiciary:

• $45 BILLION for ICE detention
• $14 BILLION for transportation and removal operations, including UAC transportation, and ensuring departure of aliens
• $8 BILLION for hiring new ICE agents
• $1.25 BILLION for Hiring immigration judges, support staff, expanding courtroom capacity and infrastructure
• $1.3 BILLION for attorneys and support staff to prosecute immigration crimes
• 950 MILLION for compensation to states/localities for incarcerating illegal aliens
• 650 MILLION to fund 287(g)
• $1,000 fee to apply for asylum, plus $550 every 6 months for work permits and $100 for every year the case drags on.
• $3,500 fee to sponsor an unaccompanied child out of an Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelter, plus a refundable $5,000 fee if the child was not ordered deported “in absentia” for missing court.
  • Note: Increased fees won’t close the loopholes that smugglers exploit to use children as passports but they may limit the extent to which they are exploited.
• $100 fee for ANY continuance in court (except in “exceptional circumstances”), including continuance to get a lawyer.
• $1,050 fee for ANY waiver application
• $900 fee for all appeals except bond (currently $110)
• $5,000 fee for being ordered deported for missing a court hearing.
• $5,000 fee for being a migrant who is apprehended between ports of entry.

Highlights from the House Homeland Security Committee:

• $46.5 BILLION for a border barrier system
• $5 BILLION for upgraded Customs and Border Protection (CPB) facilities & new personnel
  • Note: the package stipulates that “None of the funds made available by subsection (a) may be used to recruit, hire, or train personnel for the duties of processing coordinators.”
  • The Biden administration also asked for more personnel, but to accelerate the processing of inadmissible aliens into the country.
• $8 MILLION for modernizing vehicles
• $2.7BILLION for sensors, drones, radar, and other technologies
• $1BILLION for summer olympics security
• $1MILLION to commemorate victims of illegal alien crime
• $500 MILLION to crack down on cartel drug smuggling

The budget process is always a time of great opportunity and great danger for immigration policy. Notably, the reconciliation package does not include any immigration increases.

The proposed funding is a significant step towards enabling the government to detain and remove unauthorized aliens, including the millions who were released into the country between 2021 – 2025. Congress will have to pass some Great Immigration Solutions, however, in order to fully reverse the historic wave of illegal immigration that only recently ended.