Senate lawmakers have narrowly approved a massive spending bill that — if approved by the U.S. House — would supercharge funding for immigration enforcement.
Vice President JD Vance broke a deadlocked Senate vote this week, allowing the Senate version of President Donald Trump’s so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill" to move forward and closer to being signed into law.
If passed, it would give $150 billion worth of funding to immigration and border enforcement agencies.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will get some $45 billion for family and adult detention alone — up from the roughly $8 billion annual budget the agency gets now. The new amount would give ICE more than 60% more funding that the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons budget, according to an analysis from the American Immigration Council.
Another $30 billion will go toward new ICE personnel and expanded enforcement, and $59 billion will go toward Customs and Border Protection for more border wall, Border Patrol agents and surveillance.
More than 56,000 people are detained by ICE nationwide now, well over the agency’s current 41,000 bed capacity. The bill would allow the agency to detain as many as 116,000 people at once.
Last month, ICE also moved to limit congressional oversight visits to detention centers, despite lawmakers’ legal authority to tour facilities unannounced.
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Sky Harbor spokesperson Monica Hernandez confirmed that ICE agents have now been gone for a week after vacating the airport on April 6. -
Border Patrol agents in Arizona and elsewhere began wearing body cameras years ago. But a Biden-era accountability initiative to release the footage hasn't been updated in almost a year. -
The flow of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border has remained low over the past year, but there was an uptick in apprehensions between February and March. -
The Phoenix police chief has put a sergeant on paid leave while an internal investigation of the sergeant’s behavior at an ICE protest in the East Valley is conducted. -
Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to abandon its investigation into the state’s 2020 presidential election.
