What key immigration laws has Congress passed affecting ICE?
Executive summary
Congress has shaped ICE primarily through appropriations and targeted statutes: major funding packages and the “One Big Beautiful Bill” dramatically expanded ICE’s budget and detention capacity, while narrower laws and existing Immigration and Nationality Act provisions define ICE’s arrest and detention powers [1] [2] [3]. In response, members of Congress have both proposed abolition or liability reforms and used the appropriations process as the principal lever to constrain or empower ICE [4] [5] [6].
1. Massive appropriations and the One Big Beautiful Bill remade ICE’s capacity
The single most consequential congressional action in recent years was passage of H.R. 1 (“One Big Beautiful Bill”), which injected roughly $170 billion into immigration enforcement, gave ICE broad, flexible funding authority, and created multi‑billion dollar lines for detention expansion, state cooperation, and hiring thousands of new agents—changes that analysts say could triple ICE’s annual resources and enable orders of magnitude more arrests and detention [2] [7] [1]. Advocacy and legal groups warn that the reconciliation structure and lump‑sum appropriations in H.R. 1 limit routine oversight and effectively create what the Brennan Center calls a “deportation‑industrial complex” with $75 billion over four years earmarked for enforcement operations [8] [2].
2. Statutory expansions of detention and “mandatory detention”
Congress has also altered ICE’s detention authorities through more targeted statutes; critics point to the Laken Riley Act as an example of recent congressional action that expanded mandatory detention, narrowing judicial and procedural avenues for release and increasing the pool of people ICE can hold without bond [9]. Coupled with H.R. 1’s funding for new facilities and family detention beds, these changes mean Congress has not only given ICE money but adjusted the legal framework that determines who stays detained and under what rules [7] [9].
3. The Immigration and Nationality Act and the legal foundation for arrests and removals
Beyond appropriations and discrete bills, ICE’s core authorities flow from longstanding statutory provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act—such as Section 1226(a), which authorizes arrest and detention pending removal decisions, and Section 1357(a), which permits warrantless arrests under certain circumstances—and Congress’s plenary immigration power under Article I of the Constitution [3] [10]. Legal analyses underscore that while presidential administrations change policy priorities, these statutory authorities remain the legal scaffold that allows ICE officers to execute administrative warrants, effect arrests, and coordinate with criminal prosecutions where charges overlap [3] [10].
4. Congressional responses: abolition, liability reforms, and bills to clarify limits
Lawmakers have taken sharply divergent approaches: some members introduced abolition measures or bills to end qualified immunity for ICE agents—proposals that seek to dismantle or strictly curtail the agency as a statutory entity—while others have advanced laws to clarify ICE’s limits, such as measures aimed at preventing the arrest or deportation of U.S. citizens or tightening accountability [4] [11] [5]. These proposals have so far been politically contested and remain largely aspirational or symbolic in the face of the larger appropriations and statutory architecture that sustains ICE’s operations [4] [5].
5. The power of the purse and Congress’s continuing oversight leverage
Many advocates and legal observers emphasize that Congress’s most immediate and effective tool over ICE is budgetary: refusing funds, attaching conditions to appropriations, or using reconciliation language to constrain or expand enforcement are the levers that have shaped agency behavior in practice, as exemplified by calls to use the FY2026 appropriations process to rein in ICE and CBP [6] [1]. At the same time, statutory text—whether in the INA or in targeted statutes like the Laken Riley Act—sets the legal parameters agents must follow, so meaningful change requires both statutory amendment and funding choices [6] [3] [9].