What was the annual ICE budget under the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017?
Executive summary
A clear, year-by-year list of ICE’s annual budgets from 2009 through 2017 is not provided in the documents supplied; the available reporting supplies only scattered data points and trend summaries rather than a complete table of annual appropriations. What can be established from the provided sources is that ICE’s budget was roughly in the low-to-mid single-digit billions in the Obama years, with specific documented figures including a 2015 appropriations allotment of $5.96 billion and major detention funding lines in 2017, while independent analyses describe a steady increase in ICE funding across the period [1] [2] [3].
1. What the question asks and the limits of available reporting
The user’s request is a straightforward request for annual ICE appropriations for each fiscal year 2009–2017; the sources made available do not include a complete year-by-year official table, only individual budget briefs, appropriations summaries, and analytical reporting that cite select years and program-level totals, so a full, sourced annual list cannot be produced from these documents alone [4] [1] [3].
2. Hard data points that appear in the provided reporting
The clearest discrete figure in the reporting is the House Appropriations summary that specifies ICE was provided $5.96 billion for FY2015 in the 2015 Homeland Security appropriations action [1]. A 2017 Obama budget proposal is cited by advocacy reporting that earmarked $2.18 billion specifically for detention in that year’s proposal, indicating a large portion of ICE funding was allocated to detention operations even as the administration claimed other priorities [2]. ICE’s own FY2009 budget factsheet (referenced in the materials) documents that the FY2009 enacted budget included new funding for interior enforcement, detention beds and programs such as Secure Communities, though the snippet does not state a single consolidated dollar figure for ICE’s total FY2009 appropriation in the material provided here [4].
3. Trend-level context from policy and fiscal analyses
Analysts and watchdogs in the provided set of documents consistently describe a trend of growing enforcement spending across the DHS enforcement agencies in the Obama years: advocacy and reporting assert that budgets for DHS enforcement agencies, including ICE and CBP, “have grown steadily” since DHS’s creation and that ICE’s annual enforcement budget was on an upward trajectory in the 2009–2017 window [5] [6]. A Government Executive summary cited here frames that increase in broader terms, noting ICE’s annual funding rose over the decade (the piece characterizes a rise from roughly $6 billion toward higher levels by the end of the next decade), which aligns with other commentary that detention and removal operations remained heavily funded priorities throughout the Obama administration [3] [6].
4. How to get a complete year-by-year accounting and a final assessment
Given the gaps in the supplied material, the most accurate answer that can be offered from these sources is a partial one: FY2015 appropriations included $5.96 billion for ICE, the FY2009 ICE factsheet documents enacted funding increases for enforcement and detention programs though the total is not quoted in the snippet shown, and the FY2017 proposal included $2.18 billion earmarked for detention—while overall reporting portrays a steady rise in ICE resources across the Obama years [1] [4] [2] [3]. For an authoritative, year-by-year table, the primary public records to consult are ICE and Department of Homeland Security budget factsheets and the annual Congressional appropriations acts and OMB/Historical Tables; those documents will supply the precise fiscal-year totals that the current set of reports does not fully enumerate [4] [1].