The massive infusion of billions in taxpayer cash to beef up U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is prompting claims that Trump administration creating a new national police force.

The extraordinary investment of manpower and funds to build detention facilities comes from Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ – which sends $75 billion to the agency. 

‘It makes ICE a higher-funded law enforcement agency than the entire FBI, ATF, DEA, US Marshals Service and Bureau of Prisons combined,’ immigration expert Reichlin-Melnick of the National Immigration Council told CNN.

Those funds include $45 billion to build detention capacity, or about $11 billion per year over four years, amid Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The total detention tab would be even higher, or $14 billion, according to the Immigration Forum. That represents a 300 percent increase over last year’s funding.

The bill includes $30 billion for ICE enforcement and detention activities, at a time when arrests carried out by masked agents in public parks and courts in California and other sanctuary states.

In San Bernardino, California, a local bishop told his 1 million-strong diocese they could stay home from mass amid concerns about ‘potential immigration enforcement action’ near churches.

An account in the National Catholic Reporter said ICE agents detained migrants on church grounds in two parishes. 

An infusion of $75 billion in cash to ICE through Trump’s megabill has prompted accusations President Trump is building a new ‘national police force’

‘It should be no surprise that this is creating a tremendous amount of fear, confusion and anxiety for many. It is not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ — which guides us in all that we do,’ San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas wrote Monday.

Trump’s border czar Tom Homan defended the ICE boost and rejected the characterization of a national police force when asked about it at the White House. 

Homan, a former U.S. Border Patrol official, noted that that agency has been getting appropriation hikes for years.  

‘ICE has never seen a resource like this,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s about time ICE got the numbers they need, especially now, because we’re cleaning up the mess of the last four years of an open border. 

‘if you look at the numbers, and the media say, ‘Oh, the majority of people, I suspect, aren’t criminals.’ But they’re not counting misdemeanors, not counting people with pending charges,’ he added.

Immigration advocates have accused the Trump administration of orchestrating deportation efforts to stoke fear by deploying agents on horseback or in armored vehicles at Los Angeles’s MacArthur Park. 

ICE has been under fire for its used of masked agents as part of its mass deportation campaign. The new law provides funding for another 10,000 agents

‘There’s no amnesty,’ Trump said Tuesday. ‘What we’re doing is we’re getting rid of criminals, but we are doing a work program’

Federal agents stage at MacArthur Park Monday, July 7, 2025, in Los Angeles. LA Mayor Karen Bass called it a ‘stunt’

ICE agents and an LAPD officer talk at an entrance to Dodger Stadium after ICE reportedly attempted to use the stadium parking lot as a staging area. The Los Angeles Dodgers confirmed this afternoon that ICE agents tried to access Dodger Stadium today, but were denied entry to the grounds by the team

‘What I saw today looked like a city under siege and under occupation,’ said LA Mayor Karen Bass.

‘There’s no amnesty,’ Trump said this week. ‘What we’re doing is we’re getting rid of criminals, but we are doing a work program.’ 

But the president has also spoken repeatedly about finding away to allow farmers to vouch for migrants without legal status who have worked their property for a long time. The golf club and hotel entrepreneur has also spoken about similar accommodations in the hospitality industry. 

Trump said in Iowa he would ‘put the farmers in charge,’ adding: ‘If a farmer’s willing to vouch for these people, in some way, Kristi, I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?’ He was reference Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who went with Trump to the new Alligator Alcatraz.

‘I can tell you that a lot of people talking in here. Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture, Department of Homeland Security, talking about options,’ he told the Daily Mail when asked about what Trump meant.

‘Nothing has been settled, and I’m not going to get ahead of the president. Whatever the president decides, it’s his decision.’

‘One thing I’m reading in the media, that’s not true: there will be no amnesty,’ he underlined.