ICE Receives Enormous Budget Boost

As part of the Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law in July, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement received a funding boost that makes it the federal law enforcement agency with the biggest budget at its disposal in the current fiscal year of 2026. However, it is unclear how much of this budget ICE will use in the current cycle as the enormous funding increase will roll over until FY2029.

According to data found on USASpending.gov, ICE allocated funds to the tune of around $12 billion in FY2025, which left it with unused, roll-over funding of $73 billion. With $4 billion newly allocated in FY2026, the agency's theoretical budget for the running year stands at around $77 billion, while other calculations put it even higher at $79 billion. This is more than Border and Custom Protection's $78 billion, the Coast Guard's $34 billion, the Federal Prison System's $10 billion or the FBI's $8 billion. As part of the new funding, ICE said it added 12,000 new officers (up from around 10,000). The funding has also been associated with increasing capacity to hold 116,000 people in ICE detention per day (this number rose to almost 71,000 at the end of December).

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been mired in controversy since the second Trump administration began to step up immigration raids majorly during 2025, allowing raids in schools, courts and churches, causing deaths in custody to spike, bringing attention to the shootings of civilians by ICE and, down the line, funneling people into equally controversial deportation schemes.

In FY2025, ICE spent close to $12 billion, already an increase over the approximately $10 billion spent in previous years. If funding that rolled over would be used evenly over the coming four fiscal years until FY2029, ICE's funding through the Big Beautiful Bill Act would amount up to around $18 billion annually. ICE's other funding, at least in FY2026, was down to around $4 billion, however, amounting up to overall averaged FY2026 funding of around $22 billion.