Trump ICE Expansion: Funding, Detention, and Court Fights

President Trump’s second-term expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has given the agency roughly $70 billion in dedicated funding through 2029, added thousands of officers, driven the detained population to about 70,000 people, and produced 442,637 deportations in fiscal year 2025.¹² It has also produced fatal shootings of U.S. citizens, a Supreme Court fight over an 18th-century wartime statute, and measurable declines in employment and consumer spending in the communities where enforcement has concentrated.

How the Buildup Was Authorized

On January 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” It revoked Biden-era enforcement priorities, directed agencies to pursue removal against all removable individuals, told the Attorney General to prosecute unlawful-entry offenses, ordered DHS to expand 287(g) agreements that deputize state and local police for immigration work, called on ICE to “maximize its use of detention,” and threatened federal funding for jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate.³

The day after the executive order, DHS rescinded guidelines that had kept ICE out of churches, schools, hospitals, and courthouses. A replacement memo issued January 31, 2025, by then-Acting Director Caleb Vitello told agents to use “common sense” and allowed field supervisors to authorize enforcement at those locations on a case-by-case basis.⁴

The Secure America Act and $70 Billion

Trump signed the Secure America Act on June 10, 2026. The reconciliation package appropriates roughly $70 billion for ICE and Customs and Border Protection through September 30, 2029, moving both agencies outside the annual appropriations process for the rest of his term.¹ The Senate passed it 52–47 on June 5, 2026, and the House 214–212 on June 9, with no Democratic votes in either chamber. Republicans used budget reconciliation to bypass the filibuster.⁵ Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote no, arguing the three-year lump sum “weakens the normal budgeting process.”⁶

The money breaks down roughly as follows:

$38 billion for ICE, including $7 billion for Homeland Security Investigations and $31 billion for enforcement, attorneys, local law enforcement support, and technology.
$22 billion for CBP hiring, pay, training, equipment, and operations.
$5 billion for border technology and screening, including artificial intelligence.
$5 billion in a discretionary fund controlled by the Homeland Security Secretary.
$350 million for enforcement in jurisdictions that decline to coordinate with ICE.

The bill also included a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate presidential allies who claim mistreatment by the federal government. It contained no body-camera requirement, no mask prohibition, no judicial-warrant requirement for home entries, and none of the additional oversight mechanisms Democrats had demanded.¹ House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the package a “blank check to ICE without any guardrails, any oversight, or any accountability.”⁷ The bill ended a 115-day funding impasse that had followed the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January 2026.⁶

Hiring a Larger Agency

ICE ran what it called the most successful federal law enforcement recruitment campaign in its history, reporting 11,751 new hires by December 2025 from more than 220,000 applications. The agency offered signing bonuses up to $50,000, student loan repayment up to $60,000, and premium pay.⁸

An independent analysis of Office of Personnel Management records by the New York Times in February 2026 found ICE’s total workforce had grown by roughly 7,500 employees, or 36%, during 2025, reaching more than 28,000. Deportation officers grew by 4,800 to 6,900, and criminal investigators added 1,800 to reach 6,200. ICE attributed the difference between its numbers and OPM’s to reporting lags.⁹ The buildup happened while the rest of the federal workforce shrank by an estimated 10% under Department of Government Efficiency cuts.

What Enforcement Now Looks Like

Arrest rates roughly doubled in Trump’s second term. By early 2026, ICE was detaining about 70,000 people across 225 facilities, nearly double the prior year.¹⁰ “At-large” arrests in communities, rather than at borders or jails, rose 600% in the administration’s first nine months, and the number of detained people with no criminal record grew by 2,450%.¹¹ An academic analysis found the share of ICE arrestees with a criminal conviction fell from roughly 60% in January 2025 to under 30% by year’s end, while the share of arrests happening in streets, workplaces, and courthouses rose from 19% to nearly 50%.¹²

ICE carried out 442,637 deportations in fiscal year 2025, an increase of about 171,000 over the prior year. About 167,000 of those removed had criminal records, or 38% of the total. The total fell short of the administration’s stated one-million-per-year goal, now set for fiscal 2027.² Between January 20, 2025, and January 20, 2026, ICE conducted 14,426 enforcement flights, an 89% jump, with domestic transfers up 132%.¹⁰ At least 85 early flights used military cargo planes before the Defense Department discontinued the practice in March 2025 on cost grounds. By August 2025, removals had gone to at least 66 countries, with Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and El Salvador the main destinations.¹³

The administration also opened new offshore and third-country pathways. Roughly 500 migrants cycled through the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay between February and mid-2025, with 9,000 more being vetted for possible transfer. El Salvador agreed to accept deportees, reportedly for about $5 million, sending some to the CECOT maximum-security prison. The arrangement drew scrutiny after a Maryland man was mistakenly deported there; the administration acknowledged an “administrative error” and eventually returned him.¹⁴ Federal courts have found some of the offshore and third-country transfer practices unlawful.¹³

Building the Detention Footprint

ICE launched a “Detention Reengineering Initiative” to replace its contract-heavy footprint with 34 government-owned sites by September 30, 2026, including 16 processing centers holding 1,000 to 1,500 people, eight large centers holding 7,000 to 10,000 each, and ten “turnkey” facilities converted from existing jails and prisons.¹⁵ The agency spent more than $700 million to buy nine of 24 planned warehouses in locations including Social Circle, Georgia; Socorro, Texas; and Hagerstown, Maryland. The Social Circle facility is projected to hold more than 8,000 people, which would make it the second-largest detention site in the country after Rikers Island. ICE bypassed standard competitive bidding by routing procurement through a Defense Department supply command.

About 86% of detained immigrants remained in privately operated facilities as of early 2025. The GEO Group received $2.1 billion in federal obligations in 2025 and reported $2.6 billion in annual revenue, up 6%. CoreCivic received $653.5 million in obligations against $2.2 billion in revenue, up 13%. Both companies donated $500,000 each to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee, and GEO Group’s political action committee contributed $1 million to the pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. during the 2024 cycle.¹⁰

The most visible new facility was the tent-and-trailer camp Florida Governor Ron DeSantis opened in July 2025 on an abandoned Everglades airstrip at Ochopee, nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.” Detainees and advocates described worms in the food, toilets that failed to flush, sewage on the floors, extreme heat with inconsistent air conditioning, and virtually no access to counsel. The state reportedly spent more than $1 billion on the site.¹⁶ A federal court ordered ICE to provide legal access in March 2026 in H.C.R. v. Noem. DeSantis announced the facility’s permanent closure on June 25, 2026, citing hurricane season. Officials said 21,000 people had been deported through the site in its year of operation.¹⁷

Operation Metro Surge and the Minneapolis Shootings

The most consequential single operation of Trump’s second term was Operation Metro Surge, launched in December 2025 in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area. More than 4,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents deployed to Minnesota at the operation’s peak, producing roughly 4,000 arrests. According to a Human Rights Watch report, nearly two out of three of those arrested had no prior U.S. criminal history, and detainees included U.S. citizens, refugees, green card holders, and asylum seekers.¹⁸ Minneapolis estimated the economic damage at $203.1 million, including $81 million in lost business revenue and $47 million in lost wages, with about 76,000 residents needing urgent assistance.¹⁹

Two fatal shootings during the operation drove a national crisis. On January 7, 2026, ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother of three, as she sat in her parked car near an enforcement operation. An autopsy confirmed she died from a gunshot to the side of her head. Footage showed her vehicle was not blocking agents; she was shot as she reversed. A congressional oversight report found ICE officers did not administer CPR and prevented a physician witness from helping her.²⁰

On January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was fatally shot by CBP agents after filming officers pushing bystanders at a protest. According to the same report, Pretti was pepper-sprayed, tackled by five agents, pinned face-down, and disarmed of a holstered firearm before being shot multiple times while restrained. His autopsy ruled the death a homicide. Eyewitness video showed an agent clapping afterward, and a pediatrician gave sworn testimony that agents refused to allow immediate medical aid.

The administration characterized both victims as domestic terrorists. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Good had tried to run over an officer, and senior White House official Stephen Miller called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who attempted to “assassinate federal law enforcement.”²¹ The congressional report found video evidence contradicted both characterizations. The administration asserted “federal immunity” for the agents and, according to that report, instructed federal prosecutors not to investigate or charge them. A CNN poll found 56% of adults considered the use of force in Good’s death “inappropriate.”²²

Tactics Drawing Constitutional Challenges

Several enforcement practices have drawn constitutional scrutiny from legal analysts and courts:

A policy secretly adopted in May 2025 and revealed in January 2026 asserts ICE’s authority to forcibly enter homes using I-205 “administrative warrants” signed by ICE supervisors rather than judges.²³
In September 2025, the Supreme Court stayed a lower court injunction against roving immigration patrols in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s solo concurrence argued that “apparent ethnicity” could be one factor establishing reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence. Federal agents have reportedly treated that concurrence as binding, using race, ethnicity, Spanish language, and occupation as factors for stops.²⁴
Agents use a mobile facial recognition app called “Mobile Fortify,” which ICE instructs them to prioritize over physical documents proving U.S. citizenship.
As of February 2026, more than 650 people had been charged under a federal obstruction statute for allegedly resisting, obstructing, or filming federal agents during enforcement operations.

An estimated 170 U.S. citizens were detained in the administration’s first nine months, according to a Brookings Institution analysis.²² DHS largely eliminated its Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in March 2025, abandoning 550 pending use-of-force complaints.²³

The Major Court Fights

The Alien Enemies Act Case

The highest-profile challenge to ICE’s operations is J.G.G. v. Trump, filed by the ACLU. It targets the administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime statute, to deport Venezuelan nationals over age 14 alleged to be affiliated with the gang Tren de Aragua. Many were deported to CECOT in El Salvador on March 15, 2025.²⁵

On April 7, 2025, the Supreme Court vacated lower court orders that had temporarily blocked the deportations, ruling that challenges must be brought as habeas claims in the district of confinement, and holding that detainees must receive notice in time to seek judicial review.²⁶ The case has since produced an extended contempt battle over whether the government violated the March 15 court order. By early 2026, the district court had certified the case as a class action and ordered the government to propose a remedy for those already deported.²⁷

Enforcement at Sensitive Locations

The rescission of the sensitive locations policy prompted several federal lawsuits. In February 2025, a federal judge in Maryland granted a preliminary injunction in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends v. DHS, barring warrantless enforcement at about 1,700 places of worship in 35 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico.²⁸ A Massachusetts court granted a similar injunction for Evangelical Lutheran churches in February 2026. Enforcement has continued elsewhere: in November 2025 ICE agents arrested a daycare employee in Chicago in front of children and parents, and Catholic dioceses in Nashville and San Bernardino issued dispensations excusing parishioners from the Sunday Mass obligation because of enforcement fears.⁴

Temporary Protected Status Terminations

The administration moved to end Temporary Protected Status for 13 of the 17 countries that held designations when Trump took office, affecting about one million people. By early 2026, TPS had been terminated for Afghanistan, Cameroon, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and certain Venezuelan designees, affecting nearly 320,000 people. Terminations for Yemen and remaining Venezuelan holders were pending, potentially affecting more than 350,000 additional people. Courts have blocked terminations for Burma, Ethiopia, Haiti, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria, leaving another 330,000 in legal limbo.²⁹

Economic and Community Effects

Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research studied the labor market effects of heightened ICE enforcement and found no gains for native-born workers in areas with heavy enforcement activity. Employment among U.S.-born workers in those areas declined. The study estimated that for every six immigrants removed from the workforce, one native-born worker lost a job, a result the authors attributed to the complementary nature of immigrant and native-born labor. When undocumented construction laborers left a site, the U.S.-born electricians, roofers, and supervisors alongside them often lost work too.¹²

Goldman Sachs estimated an 80% decline in net immigration to the United States, projecting a drop from about one million people per year in the 2010s to 200,000 in 2026.³⁰ States with enhanced ICE enforcement saw aggregate consumer spending fall by 1.7 percentage points compared with other states, and a Wharton study estimated that weekly foot traffic in heavily impacted areas dropped 2.7% while spending fell 6.2%.

Nearly 70% of likely undocumented immigrants, a third of lawfully present immigrants, and 12% of naturalized citizens reported worrying about being detained or deported, leading some to avoid health care, housing assistance, and food assistance. About 4.4 million U.S.-born children live with an undocumented parent, and studies have linked immigration raids and family separations to elevated rates of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder among both parents and children.³¹

Deaths in ICE detention during 2025 were the highest for any non-COVID year on record. Three people died at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, one of them ruled a homicide by asphyxia. The administration eliminated three immigration oversight sub-agencies and restricted congressional inspections of facilities.¹¹

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18
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ACLU of D.C. J.G.G. v. Trump – Challenging Unlawful Use of Alien Enemies Act
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Our Sunday Visitor. Judge Blocks Policy Permitting ICE Arrests at Some Places of Worship
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KFF. Potential Impacts of Mass Detention and Deportation Efforts on the Health and Well-Being of Immigrant Families