Prominent immigration attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick claimed that Thursday's passage of Donald Trump's mega spending bill has made Immigration and Customs Enforcement "the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history."
Reichlin-Melnick posted to X that ICE will now have "more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined."
In a follow-up post, Reichlin-Melnick, who's a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, broke down the numbers that appear in Trump's "big, beautiful bill."
"Here is the funding for immigration enforcement in the bill, to be spent through September 30, 2029," he wrote. "$74.9 billion for ICE detention and removal; $65.6 billion for CBP infrastructure, hiring, tech; $10 billion DHS slush fund; $3.5 billion for state enforcement. And more!" he wrote, pointing to a list of the "totals of all immigration and border-enforcement related spending ."
Reichlin-Melnick called it an "open question as to whether ICE even *could* spend $45 billion on detention in the next 51 months, given the agency's normal detention budget is $3.4 billion."
This must be welcome news to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after Axios reported that ICE was perilously close to running out of funds.
Axios reported that ICE was “already $1 billion over budget” as it continues to stage raids across the country. Axios's lawmaker sources said the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of ICE, could be violating “U.S. law if it continues to spend at its current pace.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) summed it up, saying, “Trump's DHS is spending like drunken sailors."
It remains to be seen how far the new influx of cash will last the department as Donald Trump vows to build more "Alligator Alcatraz"-type tent detention centers across the country.