The Trump administration now has the money to significantly expand its mass deportation efforts. The question is how quickly it can turn those billions in funding into millions of deportees – and whether the ramp-up risks prioritizing raw numbers of arrests and deportations over the humane treatment of immigrants.
A sweeping new law, passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, provides more than $170 billion for interior immigration enforcement and border security. It gives Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a historic boost of $75 billion over the next four-plus years, a big jump from its stated $8 billion annual budget, authorizing hiring and more detention beds to expand the deportation process. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) also got an influx of money for hiring and border wall construction.
The escalation of resources will let both agencies accelerate their efforts to meet the Trump administration’s stated goal of deporting 1 million unauthorized immigrants a year. But as these agencies under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) begin to deploy their increased resources, they face steep logistical challenges, including long-standing recruiting problems. Agency leaders are juggling intense pressure from the White House for higher deportation numbers – and growing public concern about the scope of immigration enforcement.
Why We Wrote This
Congress gave the Trump administration more than $170 billion for immigration enforcement and border security. The windfall, meant to fund the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history, comes with logistical challenges for federal agencies.
Scaling up the immigration and border security apparatus in the United States is likely to have a significant impact, but occur incrementally.
“You just can’t hire anybody. You’ve got to be vetted,” says South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally who has long worked on immigration issues. “It’s gonna take a while.”
Democrats worry that a rush to expand border and immigration agencies could lead to serious civil rights violations, with unseasoned officers in rapidly built and untested facilities handling a major influx of detainees. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee who has worked on immigration for decades, says he is “very concerned” about the law’s provisions.
“It is a recipe for disaster,” says the senator. The administration’s “plan is to deport as many people as possible as quickly as possible, with little or no concern about the human side of this equation or the Constitution of this country.”
Mr. Trump and his allies argue that his predecessor, President Joe Biden, abrogated his constitutional responsibility by allowing a historic level of illegal crossings.
New funding at a tenuous time
The biggest chunk of new Homeland Security funding – $46.6 billion – is for border barriers like the U.S.-Mexico border wall and related infrastructure. The next-largest sum of $45 billion will go to ICE for single-adult and family detention capacity, which experts say is key to increasing deportations.
Billions more dollars across four years will go toward hiring Homeland Security personnel, including 10,000 new ICE agents, according to DHS – a significant jump from the 20,000 law enforcement and support personnel currently employed.
This funding comes amid highly visible raids on worksites aimed at reaching the administration’s goal of 3,000 daily arrests, set by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller. ICE averaged fewer than 350 daily arrests over the past four fiscal years combined, according to agency data. The administration hasn’t published comprehensive, monthly immigration enforcement statistics since Mr. Trump returned to office, reversing a long-held practice by previous administrations of both parties.
The White House pressure has led to mass roundups of unauthorized immigrants who have no criminal charges or convictions known to the agency, according to ICE data. Some U.S. citizens have also been detained.
The Trump administration faces ongoing litigation around deportations and due process concerns. Although immigration was a winning issue for Mr. Trump in the 2024 election, recent polling indicates some shifting sentiment among the American public.
A recent Gallup poll found almost 2 out of 3 U.S. adults disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration. The survey also found that 38% of U.S. adults now support deporting all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, a drop of 9 percentage points from a year ago. An early June poll from the Pew Research Center found Americans oppose ICE conducting more raids at worksites by a 9-point margin, and oppose opening more detention facilities by a 12-point margin.
Many of Mr. Trump’s supporters continue to champion his law-and-order approach to immigration. They are focused on how the administration will carry out its promises with the infusion of new funding.
“There is no other issue the conservative base feels more passionately about than immigration,” conservative influencer Charlie Kirk posted on the social platform X on July 7. “We must deliver mass deportations, not amnesty.”
Stepping up recruitment efforts
A first task for the Trump administration is building up the workforce to carry out its deportation campaign.
Homeland Security had already been making a major hiring push even before this money came in. CBP recently launched a campaign across Washington’s public transit system, wrapping city buses with hiring ads and posting digital billboards in Metro stops, with a concentration near the Pentagon.
A recent Instagram post from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector features what appears to be an agent on horseback, flying the American flag, as Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” plays. “We are looking for the next generation to take the reins of national security,” the post says.
CBP, which includes the Border Patrol, has been allocated $4.1 billion over the next few years for hiring. The Border Patrol currently has around 16,500 agents along the southern border and around 2,000 along the northern one – and aims to hire “thousands” more, according to CBP. The agency says the Border Patrol saw its strongest four-month period of recruitment ever between this January and April, with 34,650 applications marking a 44% increase over the same period last year. (Meanwhile, monthly Border Patrol encounters, a proxy for illegal border crossings, are lower than they’ve been in 25 years, the earliest data available. The drop comes amid stepped-up enforcement and surged military resources at the southern border.)
Hiring takes time. The background-check process alone can take months. The Border Patrol Academy in New Mexico is around six months long, while ICE deportation officers train in Georgia for approximately 5 1/2 months.
These jobs, which have physical fitness requirements, can be hard to staff. Law enforcement agencies around the country, from local to federal offices, have been struggling to fill open positions for years. The Border Patrol has been offering up to $30,000 in recruitment incentives for “prioritized locations,” a bonus that predates the new law.
“With the problems we’re having recruiting professional law enforcement, the notion of thousands of people being hired overnight [by ICE and CBP] is a troubling prospect,” says Senator Durbin. ICE and CBP have not responded to the Monitor’s questions about any changes to application and training standards tied to the influx of funds.
Yet despite negative headlines, “I don’t think recruitment will be a problem,” says Jerry Robinette, a retired special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations, a component of ICE. “I look at it from the standpoint of careers, and people wanting a job and a career that has longevity, that has job security, that has benefits.”
Adding detention beds
ICE was previously funded for 41,500 detention beds this fiscal year. Though ICE has received additional funds and access to around 61,000 beds across its detention network, a spokesperson for the agency says full capacity isn’t always available, for reasons such as litigation and state laws that limit detention in certain places.
As of late June, the agency reports holding 57,861 people in detention. Widespread allegations of overcrowding and lack of food have emerged alongside the uptick in complaints from lawyers of detained people, which Homeland Security officials have denied.
DHS says the new law will allow ICE to “maintain an average daily population of 100,000 illegal aliens,” and secure 80,000 new ICE beds.
“The unprecedented funding for ICE will enable my hard-working officers and agents to continue making America safe again by identifying, arresting and removing criminal aliens from our communities,” Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, said in a statement.
Expanding detention is key to deporting more people who don’t leave on their own, says Scott Mechkowski, a former ICE deputy field office director.
“The only way for me to make sure that you are going to leave is to detain you while your case is being adjudicated,” says Mr. Mechkowski. “Without the funding, you don’t have the beds.”
President Trump has trumpeted the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility run by Florida as an example of how fast soft-sided facilities can be stood up. But early reports of humanitarian concerns show the potential pitfalls of rushing to open sites. After a recent tour, Democrats raised concerns about sanitation and drinking water safety, and called for the site’s closure, with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida dubbing it an “internment camp.” Republicans defended conditions in the facility, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says fulfills a request for detention help from DHS.
The law boosts funding for coordinated enforcement between state and federal law enforcement through the 287(g) Program, which Florida has pursued statewide. That program deputizes nonfederal law enforcement with certain immigration duties, like arrests and the processing of deportable immigrants. The Trump administration has been encouraging other states and localities to adopt similar partnerships.
Immigrants in the state “are afraid to show up to work,” due to threats of arrest, says Thomas Kennedy, spokesperson for the Florida Immigrant Coalition. “The enforcement that we’ve seen has been terrible, hostile, very aggressive.”
More hiring for immigration courts
Other logistical hurdles to increasing deportations remain, like a long-standing backlog in immigration courts. Around 3.5 million cases are pending.
The law adds $3.3 billion to the Justice Department for immigration-related activities, including hiring more judges and support staff. Still, it caps the total number of judges that the agency can employ at 800. Currently, there are roughly 700 immigration judges nationwide, according to the latest court data from the spring. A union for the judges says the number has dropped to around 600 due to firings, resignations, and transfers.
More money for hiring “was a step in the right direction,” Matt Biggs, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the union that represents the immigration judges, said in a statement. “We need to continue pursuing these types of solutions to address the challenges in our immigration system effectively.” The union has disapproved of the administration’s ongoing firings of immigration judges this year.
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In recent days, the Trump administration has fired 17 immigration court judges in 10 states, according to the union.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine says more should be done to reduce the backlog for people with asylum claims, and that capping the number of immigration court judges is problematic, both for those awaiting court hearings and for those who want to see more, and faster, deportations.
“I think we would all want to whittle down the backlog of people … by having a much more prompt adjudication,” says Senator Kaine.
The Congressional Research Service estimated in 2023 that over 1,300 judges were needed to eliminate the immigration court backlog over the next decade. The backlog has grown since. The bipartisan 2024 border security and immigration bill that Republicans pulled support from after Mr. Trump opposed it had included $440 million to hire immigration judges and support staff.
Senator Graham says he’s not sure why the 800 immigration-judge cap was included in the law.
The border security provisions will dramatically reduce the number of unauthorized people coming into the country, and “The additional ICE agents and detention space will create some order around chaos,” says Senator Graham. Hopefully, he says, “You’ll have a more orderly system to get people into hearings.”
The administration, meanwhile, is also pursuing fast-track deportations called expedited removal, based on a 1996 law, that don’t guarantee access to hearings. Fulfilling an executive order from January, the government is expanding the pool of people who can be subject to expedited removal in the interior, beyond how that legal provision has typically been applied at the border. Federal agents are arresting people at immigration courts once cases are dismissed, potentially bypassing the court backlog through expedited removal.
This law’s enforcement funding dries up not long after Mr. Trump’s term ends in 2029. The question then becomes whether Congress decides to keep funding at these new levels. Following government expansions, there’s often a political incentive for lawmakers not to lay off people in their states and districts.
“Is this going to be a Trump-specific mass deportation binge followed by a purge?” asks Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights group. “Or is this the new normal … until every one of the 13 to 15 million undocumented people in the country has been found, rounded up, detained, deported, or simply chosen to leave on their own?”
Sarah Matusek reported from Denver, and Cameron Joseph from Washington.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information received from Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
