What are ICE and Border Patrol budgets in 2025 and 2026?
Executive summary
Two competing streams of numbers describe fiscal 2025 and 2026 funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol/Customs and Border Protection (CBP): baseline administration budget requests and a large 2025 congressional “reconciliation” package that redirected unprecedented sums to DHS; the reconciliation law and subsequent reporting assign tens of billions to CBP and ICE for 2025, while FY2026 requests and justifications show smaller standing-year baselines and supplemental reconciliation allocations that may flow into 2026 [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. FY2025: an unprecedented congressional package lifted DHS, CBP, and ICE funding into the tens of billions
Congress enacted a July 2025 reconciliation package (P.L. 119‑21) that sent historically large sums to DHS, producing an aggregate DHS allocation described as roughly $191.02 billion and identifying CBP funding in the package at about $64.73 billion [1]. Advocacy and policy groups parsing the law concluded it also dramatically increased ICE funding for detention and enforcement in 2025 — analyses cited figures ranging from roughly $28.7 billion available to ICE in 2025 after combining prior appropriations and reconciliation dollars to multi‑year totals for detention and deportation capacities [5] [2]. Independent groups and commentators emphasized that large portions of the reconciliation funds were earmarked for detention construction, detention beds, hiring, and enforcement operations rather than routine operating accounts [5] [2].
2. FY2026: administration requests, DHS budget justifications, and reconciliation carryover create different totals
The Trump administration’s FY2026 budget request and DHS component justifications present different, more modest baseline numbers than the reconciliation package; for example, CBP’s FY2026 budget justification states a FY2026 base of $23.0 billion and associated workforce figures for CBP [3]. Administration materials and reporting on the FY2026 request also called for additional targeted ICE funding — for instance, a FY2026 proposal noted $500 million to support expanded ICE detention capacity and other programmatic increases in the administration’s submission [6]. Meanwhile, DHS publicly warned it could allocate substantial portions of the reconciliation money into FY2026 execution, with reporting that roughly $43.8 billion of the reconciliation funding might be allocated by DHS in fiscal 2026 to component activities including ICE and CBP [4]. The ICE congressional budget justification for FY2026 exists in DHS materials but the snippet provided does not show a single consolidated FY2026 ICE topline number separate from reconciliation carryover [7].
3. Why public totals diverge: baseline appropriations vs. reconciliation/supplementals and differing accounting
Analysts and advocacy groups highlight that the headline “big numbers” come from a reconciliation bill that directed large, multi‑year sums to broad DHS priorities, and those totals are not the same as ordinary annual appropriations or the administration’s requested base budgets [1] [2]. Sources show CBP’s FY2026 base request at about $23.0 billion [3] while the reconciliation law and related reporting treated CBP as receiving tens of billions more in 2025 [1]. Similarly, ICE’s standing pre‑reconciliation budget was far smaller; public analyses calculated ICE’s available resources in 2025 rose sharply when reconciliation dollars and prior appropriations were combined, producing multi‑billion‑dollar annual effective totals for enforcement and detention [5] [2]. Different reporting outlets and advocacy groups also use different framings — some emphasize programmatic line items (beds, detention construction, hiring bonuses), others the total DHS envelope — which produces conflicting topline impressions [4] [5].
4. Bottom line: specific answers and limitations of available reporting
For FY2025, the enacted reconciliation package produced large, headline figures: DHS was allocated roughly $191.02 billion in the July 2025 law, with CBP singled out at about $64.73 billion in that accounting and ICE receiving large reconciliation augmentations that some observers place at roughly $28.7 billion available in 2025 when combined with earlier appropriations [1] [2] [5]. For FY2026, the administration’s FY2026/baseline submissions show lower “base” numbers — CBP’s FY2026 justification lists $23.0 billion [3] — while DHS and analysts warned that reconciliation funding could and would be obligated into FY2026 [4]. The precise single‑line “ICE budget for 2026” is not quoted in the provided FY26 ICE justification snippet, and multiple sources treat reconciliation and base budgets differently, so absolute single‑number statements about ICE in 2026 cannot be fully corroborated from the snippets provided [7] [4].