"When you have tens and tens of billions of dollars that can be easily spent with very limited oversight and no fear that you're going to have problems in the next fiscal year with Congress, you have created a real vulnerability to fraud or misconduct.”
— John Sandweg, who served as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Obama administration, speaking to NPR about the $75 billion that Republicans gave to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer.
The massive influx of funding, dwarfing the $9.8 billion the agency received in fiscal year 2024, turned ICE into the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. The money, which can be spent over four years, also reduced the ability of Congress to influence ICE’s activities, since the agency now has no need to face congressional scrutiny while asking for more money.
Sam Bagenstos, general counsel at the Office of Management and Budget under President Biden, told NPR that Republicans essentially handed ICE a blank check. “Here what we have is just a massive shoveling of cash to an agency with few if any strings,” he said, adding that lawmakers “gave ICE enough money that they can say to Congress, 'Yeah, sorry, we don't need to come back to you for money, and there's nothing you can do to us.’”
Sandweg emphasized the importance of annual funding debates and of Congress maintaining the power of the purse. “Having that appropriations mechanism where you have to get up there and defend what you did and how you did it every year — that is a tempering influence on the agency,” he said. “You might get a call from a senior member of the Appropriations Committee. Those calls resulted in a lot more changes.”
Critics of ICE say that the influx of money played a role in the agency becoming larger, more aggressive and more violent, contributing to the deaths of two American citizens during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. They have also expressed concerns about waste as the agency builds out a new detention network designed to hold upwards of 100,000 people at a time. Questionable spending by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who used some of the funds to purchase two luxury jets and to commission an advertising campaign promoting her image, only heightened those concerns.
For now, ICE funding remains at the center of the DHS shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. Calling for reforms at the immigration agencies, Democrats want to pass a bill that denies new funds for DHS and Customs and Border Protection, which also received billions of dollars in extra funding, but Republican lawmakers in the House insist that the agencies be included in any bill.
As some Republicans eye a party-line reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CBP, Sen. Ted Cruz has proposed a 10-year appropriation. “I think we may very well be in a world where these Senate Democrats will never again vote to fund ICE, that they're simply saying, ‘shut down,’” Cruz told Fox News.