How much money does ICE have in 2026
Executive summary
The baseline, agency-submitted FY2026 operating request for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows roughly $11.3 billion in funding and staffing for FY2026 (21,808 positions, 21,786 FTE) [1]. That figure is the clearest formal number in the public budget documents, but several subsequent congressional actions and large multi-year packages introduced in 2025–2026 create credible alternative totals—ranging from about $10–11 billion under regular appropriations to estimates of $30–37.5 billion when one-time or multi‑year supplemental and reconciliation allocations are counted [2] [3] [4].
1. The clean baseline: the FY2026 ICE request and the departmental justification
ICE’s FY2026 Congressional Budget Justification submitted to DHS lists an ICE FY2026 budget of $11.3 billion along with detailed staffing numbers (21,808 positions; 21,786 FTE), and is the primary, agency-level statement of the funds ICE expects to operate under regular appropriations [1]. That document is the most authoritative single public source for ICE’s requested/justified baseline FY2026 funding and is the figure Congress and budget analysts typically start from during appropriations negotiations [1] [5].
2. Appropriations jockeying: votes, reductions, and “flat” funding in the House package
Congressional maneuvering in late January 2026 produced competing public tallies: a House appropriations text that Democratic leaders said would cut ICE enforcement and removal operations by $115 million while keeping the agency’s overall budget about flat (relative to the prior year), and other reporting that a larger DHS spending package included roughly $10 billion for ICE in that legislative vehicle [6] [2] [7]. Those numbers reflect partisan negotiation positions and leave room for modest adjustments around the roughly $10–11 billion baseline [6] [2].
3. The “big money” wrinkle: multi‑year packages, reconciliation and supplemental totals
Separate from annual appropriations, multiple outlets document very large multi‑year sums added to homeland‑security and immigration enforcement via other legislative actions in 2025—figures advocates and some analysts aggregate into much larger effective ICE resources for 2026. Civil liberties groups and advocacy analyses cite a roughly $170 billion addition to immigration and border-enforcement budgets across agencies passed in mid‑2025, and various calculators and analysts spread portions of that money into ICE’s FY2026 pocket, producing estimates from roughly $18.7 billion (one‑year share of a four‑year $75 billion ICE allocation) up to $30–37.5 billion for 2026 depending on allocation assumptions [8] [9] [3] [4]. These larger totals depend on how much of multi‑year appropriations or DHS discretionary “slush funds” are actually obligated to ICE in FY2026, a matter the public record does not precisely fix in the sources provided [9] [3] [4].
4. Reconciling the competing tallies: what can be stated with confidence
With the available official documents, the most defensible answer is that ICE’s formal FY2026 base budget request/justification stands at about $11.3 billion [1]. It is equally true, however, that subsequent congressional packages and a large mid‑2025 appropriations deal produced credible, cited estimates that effectively multiply ICE’s fiscal resources for 2026—analysts and advocacy groups compute figures from roughly $18.7 billion up to $37.5 billion or more when one‑time or phased portions of multi‑year funding are attributed to FY2026 [9] [3] [4]. Which total represents “how much money ICE has in 2026” therefore depends on whether the question refers strictly to the annual, line‑item appropriations (about $11.3B) or to the broader universe of multi‑year/reconciliation/supplemental allocations that may be spent on ICE operations (estimates vary widely, from roughly $30B to $37.5B in some analyses) [1] [3] [4].
5. The political and reporting context that shapes the numbers
Reporting and advocacy outlets emphasize different totals to serve distinct agendas: agency and congressional documents anchor the $10–11 billion annual baseline [1] [5], while advocacy groups and progressive critics highlight multi‑year windfalls and reconciliation language to argue that ICE will see a dramatic real increase [8] [9] [4]. Mainstream news coverage notes both the baseline and the disputed larger totals, and acknowledges the legislative uncertainty as a driver of partial‑shutdown and appropriations fights that leave final FY2026 obligations unresolved in public sources [2] [7] [10].