How did Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) budgets compare in FY2023 and FY2024 based on agency budget justifications?
Executive summary
The ICE budget justifications for the periods covering FY2023 and FY2024 show a clear emphasis on personnel growth for both Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with ERO described as having larger staffing levels and receiving larger position increases in the cited documents; however, the provided agency justifications in the reporting focus on position counts and mission-driven program changes rather than providing a direct, line-by-line dollar comparison between ERO and HSI for those years [1] [2]. Because the available excerpts emphasize positions and program priorities and do not provide explicit, comparable dollar totals by program in the supplied pages, any precise dollar comparison cannot be supported from these sources alone [1] [2].
1. What the agency documents actually show about staffing and priorities
ICE’s budget materials repeatedly foreground new and transferred positions as the primary metric of program growth: one budget justification lists 369 positions for HSI and 518 positions for ERO in the same programmatic presentation, signaling that ERO had higher authorized staffing in that depiction [1]. Another ICE passage highlights HSI additions tied to victim assistance, countertrafficking and counterintelligence missions, while describing ERO staffing increases as supporting an expansion of ERO’s international footprint and management of the non‑detained docket—language that frames the increases as operational priorities rather than pure line-item dollar shifts [2] [1].
2. Net position increases: ERO appears to have received larger additions
The documents specifically cited include mentions of incremental position changes: one excerpt notes seven transferred-in Blue Campaign positions to HSI and separately calls out 95 positions for ERO in a staffing change description, indicating that ERO received a substantive named increase in that change package [2]. Elsewhere the budget justification groups larger totals for each program (369 HSI, 518 ERO), reinforcing that ERO’s headcount and corresponding resource needs were portrayed as larger in these justifications [1]. These position-focused metrics are the clearest place the agency’s justifications document program differences.
3. How the justifications explain mission-driven resource allocation
The language in the justifications ties resource shifts to different operational objectives: HSI increases are framed around investigative capabilities—victim assistance, counter‑trafficking centers, and counterintelligence—while ERO increases emphasize removals, international operations and the management of non‑detained cases, which typically require deportation officers, travel, and case-management support [2] [1]. The FY2024 annual reporting further describes operational strain in local field offices and ERO’s removals work supporting anti‑organized‑crime missions, indicating that resource pressure and operational tempo were cited to justify ERO resourcing needs [3].
4. What is missing from the provided budget documents—dollar-level comparability
The supplied excerpts do not contain explicit, comparable dollar figures that break out FY2023 vs FY2024 appropriations or requested funding levels for ERO and HSI line-by-line; the cited pages emphasize positions, program changes, and mission rationales rather than presenting a neat dollar-to-dollar comparison by directorate that would answer “how much money did each receive” in definitive numbers [2] [1]. ICE’s broader statements about agency scale—an approximate $8 billion annual budget devoted primarily to ERO, HSI and OPLA—illustrate the agency-level funding context but do not disaggregate FY2023 and FY2024 amounts between ERO and HSI in the provided material [4].
5. Bottom line and caveats
Based on the agency budget justifications available in the reporting, ERO was presented with higher authorized staffing counts and specific positional increases relative to HSI across the cited pages, and the narrative framing assigns different mission drivers to each program (ERO: removals and international footprint; HSI: investigations, victim services, counterintelligence) [1] [2]. Absent explicit, program-level dollar tables or line-item budget totals in the provided excerpts, a definitive statement comparing the exact FY2023 and FY2024 dollar amounts allocated to ERO versus HSI cannot be supported from these sources; further review of the full ICE congressional budget justifications or OMB tables would be required to produce dollar-by-dollar comparisons [2] [1].