How did Congressional appropriations for ICE compare to the Obama Administration’s budget requests each year from 2009 to 2017?

1. The question being asked — and why it is tricky

The user asks for a year-by-year actionable comparison of two figures per fiscal year: the President’s ICE budget request and the final Congressional appropriation; producing that requires line-item appropriations data for ICE (or its DHS custody/operations subaccounts) and the Administration’s detailed budget justification for each fiscal year, documents that the appropriations process typically summarizes in committee reports rather than in single headline figures ^[4]. The supplied sources underline that Congress often provides top-line DHS totals and relegates component detail to committee reports and budget justifications, meaning straightforward annual comparisons cannot be reconstructed solely from high-level media pieces or advocacy summaries ^{[4] [5]}.

2. What the reporting actually shows: 2015 as a clear example

The clearest specific comparison in the provided reporting concerns 2015: NPR reports that Congress approved roughly $5.96 billion for ICE in 2015 while President Obama requested about $1 billion more, so Congress funded ICE below the Administration’s ask that year ^[2]. At the broader DHS level, House Appropriations Democrats summarized FY2015 budget authority as $39.67 billion versus a FY2015 DHS budget request of $38.2 billion, illustrating that top-line DHS totals can move independently of agency-level funding choices and amendments tied to immigration policy ^[3].

3. Broader trend during the Obama years: growth with political pushback

Advocacy and reporting materials frame a sustained enlargement of immigration enforcement budgets over the Obama presidency: the National Immigration Forum notes steady growth in DHS enforcement agency budgets since DHS’s creation and ties large-scale deportations under Obama to increased spending on ICE and CBP ^[1]. Other coverage documents that appropriations fights and policy riders—especially around immigration executive actions—affected final funding language and amounts in individual bills, reflecting partisan and interest-group pressure that could push appropriations either above or below the Administration’s request in a given year ^{[3] [6]}.

4. Why precise year-by-year reconciliation is absent from these sources

The lack of an annual tabulation in the supplied sources is not an oversight but a consequence of how federal budgets are produced: the president’s request, Congressional appropriations bills, committee reports, and agency budget justifications must all be consulted to reconcile requested versus enacted amounts for ICE’s subaccounts such as Custody Operations or Enforcement and Removal Operations; several sources explicitly recommend those documents for definitive figures ^{[4] [7]}. The GAO also notes ICE’s reliance on supplemental funding and intra-DHS transfers in recent years, another complication for straight comparisons unless supplemental and transfer details are tracked ^[8].

5. Bottom line—what can be asserted from the supplied reporting

From the documents provided it can be firmly stated that ICE funding rose during the Obama years, Congress did not always grant the Administration’s full ICE requests (with 2015 a documented example where Congress approved a lower ICE figure than the Obama request), and assembling a complete 2009–2017 year-by-year comparison requires consulting appropriations committee reports and the Administration’s annual budget justifications for each fiscal year—sources that are referenced but not reproduced here ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [8]}. Alternative viewpoints exist: advocacy groups emphasize the fiscal and humanitarian costs of growing enforcement budgets ^[1], while appropriators and some lawmakers defended funding adjustments as necessary checks or vehicles for policy riders ^{[3] [6]}.