WASHINGTON — Building the border wall. Increasing detention capacity. Hiring thousands of immigration agents.
The budget bill narrowly approved by the Senate on Tuesday includes massive funding infusions — roughly $150 billion — toward immigration and border enforcement. If passed, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will cement President Trump’s hard-line legacy on immigration.
The budget bill would make Immigration and Customs Enforcement the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government, exceeding its current yearly $3.4-billion detention budget many times over. It also would impose fees on immigration services that were once free or less expensive and make it easier for local law enforcement to work with federal authorities on immigration.
The 940-page Senate bill will now head back to the House, which passed its version in May, also by one vote, 215 to 214. The two chambers must now reconcile the two versions of the bill.
Though the legislation is still evolving, the immigration provisions in the House and Senate versions are similar and not subject to the intense debates on other issues, such as Medicaid or taxes.
Many of the funds would be available for four years, though some have longer or shorter timelines. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that, if enacted, the bill would increase the deficit by at least $3.3 trillion
over the next 10 years.
Here are key elements concerning immigration:
Border wall
- $46.5 billion toward fortifying the U.S.-Mexico border wall and interdicting migrant smugglers at sea.
This includes building barrier sections and access roads and installing barrier-related technology such as cameras, lights and sensors. The legislation doesn’t reference specific locations.
Trump, in his first term, repeatedly vowed that Mexico would pay for the wall. It didn’t.
Staffing
- $32 billion for immigration enforcement, including staffing of ICE and expanding so-called 287(g) agreements, in which state and local law enforcement agencies partner with federal authorities to deport immigrants.
- $7 billion for hiring Border Patrol agents, customs officers at ports of entry, air and marine agents and field support staff; retention bonuses; and vehicles.
- $3.3 billion to hire immigration judges and support staff, among other provisions.
Trump has said he wants to hire 10,000 ICE agents, as well as 3,000 Border Patrol agents.
Detention
- $45 billion to build and operate immigrant detention facilities and to transport those being deported.
- $5 billion for new Customs and Border Protection facilities and improvements to existing facilities and checkpoints. It’s unclear how this could affect California or the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 near San Onofre.
The bill allows for families to be detained indefinitely, pending a removal decision.
. Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, called that a blatant violation of the so-called Flores settlement agreement, which has been in place since 1977 and limits to 20 days the duration children can legally be detained.
Local assistance
- $13.5 billion to reimburse states and local governments for immigration-related costs. These are divided into two pots of funding: $10 billion for the “state border security reinforcement fund” and the “Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide” or BIDEN fund. Both would fund the arrest by local law enforcement of immigrants who unlawfully entered the U.S. and committed any crime.
“You can think of it like a gift for [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott,” Altman said.
Immigration fees
- A fee of at least $100 for those seeking asylum, down from a $1,000 fee outlined in the House bill. Applicants also would pay $100 every year the application remains pending. This is unprecedented — a fee has never before been imposed on migrants fleeing persecution.
- At least $550 ($275 on renewal) to apply for employment authorization for those with asylum applications, humanitarian parole and temporary protected status. Currently there is no fee for asylum seekers and a $470 fee for others.
- At least $500 for temporary protected status, up from $50.
The stated fees are minimums — the bill allows for annual increases and, for many, prohibits waivers based on financial need.
“The paradox of a fee for an employment authorization document is that you’re not allowed to work, but you need to pay for the fee,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
Altman noted that imposing a yearly fee on asylum seekers for their pending applications punishes people for the U.S. government’s backlogged system, which is out of the applicant’s control.
Other sections exclude lawfully present immigrants, such as refugees and those granted asylum, from benefits including Medicare, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Another provision excludes children from the child tax credit if their parent lacks a Social Security number.
Praise and scorn
Altman, whose organization has closely tracked the immigration aspects of the funding bill, said people can look at the legislation two ways: big picture — as a $150-billion infusion to supercharge what the Trump administration has already started — or surgically, as a series of policy changes that will not be easy to undo “and make an already corrupt system subject to even fewer safeguards and really go after people’s most basic needs.”
Bush-Joseph had a different view. She said the funding reinforces an outdated and inflexible immigration system without fundamentally changing it.
“That’s why there’s all this money going to the border even though there aren’t a lot of people coming now,” she said.
Money alone won’t change things overnight, Bush-Joseph said. It takes time to hire people and to open detention facilities. Immigration judges will still have a massive backlog of cases. And getting foreign countries to agree to accept more deportees is tricky.
“Arresting and detaining people with private contractors doesn’t get you to an agreement from El Salvador to take five more planes per week,” she said.
During a White House event Thursday, Trump urged Congress to pass the bill quickly, saying it “will be the single most important piece of border legislation to ever come across the floor of Congress.”
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, one of three Republicans who voted against the bill Tuesday, had called it “reckless spending,” writing on X: “I’m all for hiring new people to help secure our borders, but we don’t need it to the extent that’s in this bill, especially when our border is largely contained.”
Across the political aisle, Democrats including California Sen. Alex Padilla have slammed the bill, saying the immigration-related funding increases amount to a substantial policy change.
“You would think that maybe just for a moment, Republicans would take this reconciliation process as an opportunity to do what they said before they wanted to do and modernize our nation’s immigration system,” Padilla said last month. “But they’re not.”
