The $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement operations that the Republican Party included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act earlier this year led some to warn that the Trump administration was ramping up spending at anti-immigration agencies not just to fund its attacks on migrants, but to deploy federal forces against anyone it wanted to across U.S. communities.
New reporting on Monday detailed just how much U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has spent on weaponry since President Donald Trump took office—weapons that have been purchased as the administration has turned federal agents on US cities such as Chicago and Portland, illustrating how the president is treating increasingly armed ICE officers as his “private military,” as one progressive critic said.
As images spread online of immigration agents deploying pepper spray and tear gas at nonviolent protesters, Judd Legum at Popular Information recently delved into government contracting records from the Federal Procurement Data System and found that ICE has increased its spending on “small arms, ordnance, and ordnance accessories manufacturing” by 700% this year compared to 2024 numbers.
The agency spent $71,515,762 on small arms from January 20—the day Trump began his second term—through October 18.
The number dwarfs ICE’s spending during the first Trump term, during which the agency spent about $8.4 billion annually on small arms, and during President Joe Biden’s administration.
The type of weaponry purchased by ICE also raised alarm Monday, with Legum reporting that while most of the agency’s spending was on guns and armor, “there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and ‘guided missile warheads and explosive components.’”
“If the immigration enforcement apparatus of the United States were its own national military, it would be the 13th most heavily funded in the world. This puts it higher than the national militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey, and Spain—and just below Israel.”
The reporting comes as ICE and other immigration agencies continue to deploy armed, masked agents in major Democratic-leaning US cities, where officers have been filmed and photographed pointing a weapon at a protester; firing a pepper ball at a pastor, and pointing a firearm at bystanders who saw one agent arresting a man.
A CBS reporter in Chicago also accused an ICE officer of firing a pepper ball at her vehicle, causing the chemical to “engulf the inside of her truck.”
Sally Duval, a Texas state House candidate in last year’s election, said she was “curious to know why ICE needs ‘guided missile warheads.’”
The report came days after the Trump administration used the US military for what Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom called “a profoundly absurd show of force that could put Californians directly in harm’s way,” when the Marines fired 155-millimeter artillery shells over a section of the busy Interstate 5 freeway to celebrate the military branch’s 250th anniversary.
Newsom accused Trump of “using our military to intimidate people [he disagrees] with” and called the exercise “reckless.”
Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, said Legum’s reporting on Monday showed that “ICE was always going to be Trump’s private military to deploy domestically against Americans.”
Legum’s analysis—which likely understated total spending on weapons by Trump’s deportation forces, as it did not include spending by other anti-immigration agencies—followed a report on ICE’s recent funding increase by In These Times.
With the $170 billion included in the OBBBA, reported the outlet, “if the immigration enforcement apparatus of the United States were its own national military, it would be the 13th most heavily funded in the world. This puts it higher than the national militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey, and Spain—and just below Israel.”
The budget, Brandon Lee of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights told In These Times, “shows the misplaced priorities of this administration, where they are cutting healthcare and cutting vital programs for people across the country, and putting all of this money into a domestic terrible force.”
“And it shows the cruelty,” said Lee, “that the Trump administration intends to enact on all people in the United States.”
