The “big, beautiful bill” signed into law by President Trump last week will allow him to dramatically expand his immigration crackdown.
The “big, beautiful bill” signed into law by President Trump last week will allow him to dramatically expand his immigration crackdown, giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement an unprecedented pool of funding to bolster its efforts to arrest and deport immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
The money allocated by the law amounts to the largest infusion of funds Congress has given the federal government for immigration enforcement, at a time when the Trump administration has vowed to oversee a deportation campaign of unprecedented proportions.
Overall, the Republican-led Congress set aside roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security efforts through the legislation, including $75 billion in extra funding for ICE, making it by far the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
“The bill will supercharge immigration enforcement”, said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an attorney at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
Here’s a look at what the new funds will be used for:$45 billion for ICE’s detention system
The law gives ICE $45 billion to expand its already sprawling detention system over the next four years, letting officials use the money to hold both single adults and families with children facing deportation.
Based on cost estimates, the money could allow ICE to hold more than 100,000 detainees at any given time, roughly doubling the current capacity. On Wednesday morning, ICE was holding just over 58,000 individuals in its detention network, which was previously funded for 41,500 beds, according to internal agency data obtained by CBS News.
ICE’s detention network mainly consists of facilities operated by for-profit prison companies and county jails. The Trump administration has also been exploring using military facilities in the U.
