U.S. Senate lawmakers are preparing to debate their own version of a massive government spending bill passed by the U.S. House this month.
The House GOP-crafted bill includes some $45 billion that would go toward detaining immigrants until 2029.
That’s roughly $9 billion per year — an amount that far surpasses a previous record-high of $3.4 billion Congress appropriated for ICE detention a little over a year ago, under the Biden administration.
ICE currently has capacity to detain roughly 41,000 people. Under the GOP bill, that number would increase to some 100,000.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, says there’s not currently enough space to detain that many people.
“ICE would be forced to use this funding to build new detention centers, new soft-sided detention camps, where tents would be thrown up by detention contractors, where immigrants would be held, potentially en masse,” he said.
The bill includes over $150 billion for various components of immigration enforcement, including detention, border wall construction and deportation transportation.
“Taken together, this funding would make ICE the best funded federal law enforcement agency in U.S. history, with more detention bed funding that the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons and potentially more agents on board than the entire Federal Bureau of Investigations,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
He says the new bill also includes additional funds for ICE to hire new agents and increase collaboration initiatives with local law enforcement agencies — like 287-g agreements. But, no funding for DHS oversight.
“When you look at this taken together, you see that this is a transformative level of funding for ICE and would allow the agency to be present in communities around the country in a way that we have never seen before in American history,” he said. “With federal law enforcement officers going into every single community, every single day in more visible ways than we've ever seen in this country, maybe since the days of prohibition.”
DHS shuttered three oversight offices in March and laid off staff. A group of rights organizations filed suit against the closures, and the agency has since said the offices have been restored. But staff layoffs remain.
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