WASHINGTON (AP) — Just weeks after Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, alongside other administration officials, made a visit to Capitol Hill with a clear directive: they required funds to implement the White House’s border security and large-scale deportation plans.
By summer, Congress delivered.
The Republican Party’s significant legislation, which Trump signed into law on July 4, incorporated notable tax cuts and expenses, marking what can be seen as the Department of Homeland Security’s most substantial financial augmentation yet — nearly $170 billion, almost doubling its standard annual budget.
This substantial financial influx is fueling expansive new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations nationwide. These operations manifest in dramatic situations where individuals are apprehended from various urban locations and workplaces. This activity forms the backbone of Trump’s commitment to initiate the most extensive domestic deportation initiative in U.S. history. Homeland Security confirmed plans for ICE to establish detention facilities at certain military bases over the weekend.
“We’re getting them out at record numbers,” Trump said at the White House bill signing ceremony. “We have an obligation to, and we’re doing it.”
Money flows, and so do questions
This surge in funding is triggering concerns across Congress and other arenas, prompting inquiries from legislators across both major political parties, who bear the responsibility of oversight. While the bill outlines broad financial categories—such as nearly $30 billion for ICE agents, $45 billion for detention centers, and $10 billion for the Office of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—it lacks comprehensive policy guidance or explicit directives. Recently, Homeland Security announced $50,000 ICE hiring bonuses.
And it’s not just the big bill’s fresh infusion of funds fueling the president’s agenda of 1 million deportations a year.
Since Trump assumed the presidency, his administration has reportedly redirected up to $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other budget allocations, channeling these resources into immigration and deportation efforts, according to legislators.
“Your agency is out of control,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Noem during a Senate committee hearing in the spring.
The senator warned that Homeland Security would “go broke” by July.
Noem quickly responded that she always lives within her budget.
However, in a subsequent letter to Homeland Security, expressing opposition to the reallocation of funds, Murphy criticized ICE for allegedly being instructed to spend at a pace she described as “indefensible and unsustainable,” often bypassing Congressional approval.
This past week, the new Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, along with a subcommittee chairman, Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, requested a briefing from Noem on the border security components of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, which included $46 billion over the next four years for Trump’s long-sought U.S.-Mexico border wall.
“We write today to understand how the Department plans to outlay this funding to deliver a strong and secure homeland for years to come,” the GOP lawmakers said in a letter to the homeland security secretary, noting border apprehensions are at record lows.
“We respectfully request that you provide Committee staff with a briefing on the Department’s plan to disburse OBBBA funding,” they wrote, seeking a response by Aug. 22.
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Associated Press the department is in daily discussions with the committee “to honor all briefing requests including the spend plan for the funds allocated” through the new law.
“ICE is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity,” she said. “This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases, including Fort Bliss.”
Deportations move deep into communities
All together, it’s what observers on and off Capitol Hill see as a fundamental shift in immigration policy — enabling DHS to reach far beyond the U.S. southern border and deep into communities to conduct raids and stand up detention facilities as holding camps for immigrants.
The Defense Department, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies are being enlisted in what Kathleen Bush-Joseph, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, calls a “whole of government” approach.
“They’re orienting this huge shift,” Bush-Joseph said, as deportation enforcement moves “inward.”
The flood of cash comes when Americans’ views on immigration are shifting. Polling showed 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a “good thing” for the country, having jumped substantially from 64% a year ago, according to Gallup. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now.
At the same time, Trump’s approval rating on immigration has slipped. According to a July AP-NORC poll, 43% of U.S. adults said they approved of his handling of immigration, down slightly from 49% in March.
Americans are watching images of often masked officers arresting college students, people at Home Depot lots, parents, workers and a Tunisian musician. Stories abound of people being whisked off to detention facilities, often without allegations of wrongdoing beyond being unauthorized to remain in the U.S.
A new era of detention centers
Detention centers are being stood up, from “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida to the repurposed federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, and the proposed new “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana. Flights are ferrying migrants not just home or to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison but far away to Africa and beyond.
Homan has insisted in recent interviews those being detained and deported are the “worst of the worst,” and he dismissed as “garbage” the reports showing many of those being removed have not committed violations beyond their irregular immigration status.
“There’s no safe haven here,” Homan said recently outside the White House. “We’re going to do exactly what President Trump has promised the American people he’d do.”
Back in February, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Budget Committee, emerged from their private meeting saying Trump administration officials were “begging for money.”
As Graham got to work, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a leading deficit hawk, proposed an alternative border package, at $39 billion, a fraction of the size.
But Paul’s proposal was quickly dismissed. He was among a handful of GOP lawmakers who joined all Democrats in voting against the final tax and spending cuts bill.
