How Is ICE Funded: Appropriations, Fees, and Forfeiture

ICE is funded primarily through annual appropriations that Congress passes out of the U.S. Treasury’s General Fund, which is built from federal tax revenue. For fiscal year 2026, the administration requested about $11.3 billion for ICE’s regular operations, and in July 2025 Congress separately approved a $74.85 billion multi-year supplemental package on top of that.¹² Smaller streams round out the budget: visa and inspection fees paid by the people who use certain ICE programs, proceeds from seized criminal assets, and reimbursements from other federal agencies that use ICE’s services.

Annual Appropriations From the Treasury General Fund

The bulk of ICE’s money moves through the regular discretionary appropriations process. Each year the President submits a budget request, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees draft their own bills, and Congress eventually enacts a spending law that tells ICE how much it can spend and on what.

The FY2026 request of roughly $11.29 billion breaks into three parts:

Operations and Support — $10.84 billion for salaries, detention, investigations, and day-to-day enforcement
Procurement, Construction, and Improvements — $40.4 million for equipment and facility upgrades
Fee-funded accounts — about $409.5 million from visa fees, inspection fees, and bond-related collections that don’t rely on taxpayer dollars

The request supports roughly 21,800 full-time positions.¹ The agency’s enacted budget has grown steadily from roughly $3.3 billion in 2003 to about $9.9 billion in FY2024.

What the Appropriation Actually Buys

Two operational arms consume most of the budget. Enforcement and Removal Operations, which arrests, detains, and deports people, was allocated about $6.25 billion in the FY2026 request. Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigative branch that works smuggling, trafficking, cybercrime, financial fraud, and more than 400 other federal statutes, was allocated about $2.58 billion.¹³ The rest covers mission support and management.

Within ERO, custody operations are the single largest cost. The FY2026 request set aside roughly $4.18 billion just to hold people in immigration detention, close to 40 percent of the whole agency budget.¹ The daily detention population hit a record of more than 73,400 people in mid-January 2026. Since around 2009, Congress has typically written language into appropriations bills setting a minimum number of detention beds, which effectively puts a floor under detention spending. Most detained people are held in facilities operated by private companies under contract with ICE, so a large share of the detention budget flows to for-profit operators.

The 2025 Supplemental Package

Regular appropriations are not the only channel. ICE periodically receives large infusions through supplemental legislation, and the FY2025 reconciliation package signed into law on July 4, 2025 was the biggest in the agency’s history. It provided $74.85 billion in additional funding spread over multiple years: $45 billion earmarked for detention capacity and $29.85 billion for other operational and procurement costs.²

For context, that single package is roughly seven times ICE’s regular annual budget. It moved through budget reconciliation, which lets the Senate pass spending bills by simple majority instead of the usual 60-vote threshold.

Fees Paid by Program Users

Not every dollar comes from taxpayers. Several ICE programs are financed entirely by fees paid by the people who use them.

The largest is the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which tracks international students and exchange visitors and is authorized under federal immigration law.⁴ It is funded through I-901 fees paid before applicants enter the country, and the FY2026 budget allocates $216.5 million from those collections.¹ Current I-901 amounts are $350 for F-1 and M-1 students, $220 for J-1 exchange visitors, $35 for summer work/travel, au pair, and camp counselor participants, and no fee for federally sponsored exchange visitors.⁵

ICE also collects roughly $135 million a year through immigration inspection user fees, $55 million through the Breached Bond Detention Fund (which holds bonds forfeited when people fail to appear for immigration proceedings), and about $3 million through a smaller Detention and Removal Office fee account.¹ Together the fee accounts run around $409 million a year and operate independently of the taxpayer-funded portion of the budget.

Asset Forfeiture Proceeds

When ICE investigators break up smuggling networks or uncover financial crimes, the property and cash they seize can be forfeited to the government. The proceeds go into the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, a pooled account established by federal law that collects forfeiture revenue from Treasury and DHS law enforcement agencies.⁶ The fund took in $2.26 billion in FY2024, up from $1.62 billion the year before.⁷

ICE is named in the enabling statute as an eligible recipient, so money from the fund can be redistributed to the agency for law enforcement equipment, training, and joint task force work.⁶ The Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture manages the distributions.⁸ These dollars reach ICE without a separate congressional appropriation, giving the agency a measure of spending flexibility. Forfeiture proceeds can also be shared with state and local partners who contributed to a case, on a case-by-case basis.

Reimbursements From Other Federal Agencies

ICE also picks up money by providing services to other parts of the federal government. Under the Economy Act, any federal agency can buy goods or services from another when doing so is cheaper or more practical than using a private contractor.⁹ When another agency draws on ICE’s investigators, detention space, or specialized equipment, it reimburses ICE for the cost. That doesn’t add to the overall federal budget, but it gives ICE working resources beyond what Congress appropriated directly.

How the Annual Cycle Works, and Why It Often Slips

The federal fiscal year begins October 1. The President’s budget request usually arrives on the first Monday in February, and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees then hold hearings and mark up their own bills.¹⁰ When Congress does not finish a spending bill by October 1, which has become common, it passes a continuing resolution that keeps agencies running at existing levels.¹¹ ICE spent much of FY2025 operating under a continuing resolution at about $10.4 billion before the reconciliation package layered supplemental funding on top.¹

What About State and Local Partnerships

ICE’s 287(g) program, which lets state and local officers perform certain immigration enforcement functions, is sometimes assumed to be a funding source. It isn’t. As of March 2026, ICE had signed 1,579 memorandums of agreement across 39 states and two U.S. territories, and under those agreements ICE pays for training and provides database access while participating jurisdictions absorb their own personnel costs.¹² A separate Department of Justice grant called the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program helps localities cover incarceration costs for certain noncitizens, but that grant comes out of DOJ’s budget, not ICE’s.

1
Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Fiscal Year 2026 Congressional Justification
2
Congress.gov. DHS FY2025 Reconciliation Funding in Context
3
Department of Homeland Security. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1372 – Program to Collect Information Relating to Nonimmigrant Foreign Students and Other Exchange Program Participants
5
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I-901 SEVIS Fee
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 31 USC 9705 – Department of the Treasury Forfeiture Fund
7
Treasury Office of Inspector General. Audit Report – Treasury Forfeiture Fund
8
U.S. Department of the Treasury. Treasury Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 31 USC 1535 – Agency Agreements
10
U.S. House Committee on the Budget. Time Table of the Budget Process
11
Congress.gov. The Executive Budget Process Timeline: In Brief
12
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Delegation of Immigration Authority Section 287(g)