How much did the government spend on ICE in 2025
Executive summary
The best-supported accounting from reporting and advocacy groups places U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spending for calendar/fiscal 2025 at roughly $28.7 billion — with alternate tallies as high as $29.9 billion depending on which supplemental appropriations and reconciliation transfers are included [1] [2]. For context, the administration requested roughly $11.3 billion for ICE in FY2026, roughly the size of a normal annual appropriation that sits well below the one-time inflows that pushed 2025 totals into the high tens of billions [3].
1. What the headline numbers mean: $28.7 billion versus $29.9 billion
Several analyses track the same phenomenon — large, extraordinary transfers to immigration enforcement in 2025 that sit on top of ICE’s routine budget — but differ slightly in their arithmetic: the Brennan Center and multiple watchdogs report ICE had roughly $28.7 billion available for 2025 after combining a regular appropriation with emergency/reconciliation infusions and a March $10 billion add-on [1] [4], while the American Immigration Council’s tally for “ICE enforcement and deportation operations” reaches $29.9 billion in some public statements, a difference that reflects alternative categorizations of border- and enforcement-related dollars [2].
2. How that total was built and why it’s disputed
Congress approved a standard FY2025 appropriation cycle that provided ICE with roughly $10–11 billion through normal channels (reporting cites $10.4 billion enacted and House summaries cite about $11 billion), and separate extraordinary measures — including a roughly $10 billion March allocation and later reconciliation language in the mid‑2025 budget package — pushed the agency’s available funds much higher for 2025 [4] [5] [1]. Different organizations count the same buckets differently (for example, whether certain multi‑agency border funds are treated as ICE money), which explains the $28.7B vs. $29.9B divergence in public reporting [1] [2].
3. The bigger fiscal context and the administration’s FY2026 request
Even as 2025 featured one‑time surges, the administration’s regular FY2026 budget request for ICE was in the neighborhood of $11.3 billion and asked for modest staffing increases and program funding consistent with a typical annual budget process — underscoring that the 2025 spike was driven by extraordinary appropriations rather than a permanent baseline jump [3]. Congressional summaries and watchdogs underscore that much of the 2025 money was earmarked for detention beds, transportation and removal operations, and contracts that expand capacity, which critics say effectively triples the agency’s operational reach for that year compared with FY2024 [5] [6] [1].
4. Competing narratives, agendas, and what remains uncertain
Advocates and watchdogs describe 2025 funding as creating a “deportation‑industrial complex” that vastly expands detention and surveillance capacity and will be used over multiple years, framing the inflows as a deliberate political choice to prioritize enforcement [1] [7]. Proponents in Congress and the administration counter that funds are necessary to “safeguard the border” and support deportation and transportation logistics [2] [3]. Reporting also finds that some of the money enables surveillance and private‑contract detention bed expansions — claims supported by public contracting and investigative coverage but without a single consolidated federal line‑item that assigns every dollar uniquely to ICE operations, which leaves room for divergent totals depending on methodology [7] [6]. Where public sources disagree, the most defensible statement is that ICE had roughly $28.7 billion available in 2025 by multiple independent tallies, with some organizations reporting up to $29.9 billion when broader enforcement-related allocations are folded in [1] [2].