Trump’s deportation agenda is about to get a $70B infusion from Congress

WASHINGTON (AP) — With virtually no strings attached, Congress is on the verge of providing a sizable infusion of cash to the Department of Homeland Security, powering President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the remainder of his term in the White House.

The nearly $70 billion package, which cleared the Republican-held Senate in a middle of the night vote and now heads to the House, was declared a “rotten bill” by the Democratic leader and an “ATM for ICE” by pro-immigrant advocates.

But for those aligned with Trump’s campaign promise for the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, it all but guarantees an uninterrupted flow of money to carry out the administration’s immigration enforcement operations — and comes on top of some $170 billion Congress already approved for the department last summer, as part of Trump’s big tax breaks bill.

“We’re going to continue to arrest people, we’re going to continue to detain people and we’re going to keep deporting people,” Trump border czar Tom Homan told CBS News on Friday.

He hinted at summer sweeps of enforcement actions coming next to New York City.

More money, fewer guardrails

The work of Congress comes at a pivotal time for the Republican president and his party as they face restless voters before the midterm elections. About one in three U.S. adults know someone who has been impacted by Trump’s immigration operations, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. And as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, most say it’s no longer a great place for immigrants.

The funding package from Congress is just a slim dozen-page bill that carries none of the usual guardrails or directives typically demanded in legislation. It turns loose $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, nearly $20 billion for the Border Patrol, and others, prepaying the department’s operations into 2029.

“Their options are limitless in terms of what they can do with this money,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director at America’s Voice, a longtime advocacy organization for immigrants.

“That is such a hard thing to accept as a taxpaying citizen that our dollars are going to this massive, mass deportation machine, while Americans are struggling to meet health care costs, and have access to food and they’re paying so much in gas.”

The administration has sought to shift the debate over its immigration operations, installing new leadership at Homeland Security in the aftermath of violent scenes of immigration enforcement earlier this year and the shooting deaths of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Rather than the dramatic street sweeps, the administration is working behind the scenes on actions that are stripping immigrant groups of their ability to remain in the U.S., by doing away with Temporary Protected Status or making it more difficult to secure green cards.

The so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children, have reported delays in renewing their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, exposing them to potential deportation.

But protests on American streets continue, including over detention conditions at the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey.

At the same time, Homeland Security continues to hire more ICE agents — it’s hosting an employment fair next month in Florida — build more detention facilities and partner with countries around the world to take people who are being deported from the U.S.

In a statement, the department said Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin are “laser focused on ensuring the hardworking men and women” of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are fully funded. It said the package from Congress “will ensure our critical national security operations continue despite any Democrat attempts to hold our great patriotic employees hostage in the future.”

Power of the purse becomes a blank check

Typically a funding package from Congress would run hundreds pages or more, with a range of specific instructions about how the money can be spent and on what timelines.

Congress, after all, holds the power of the purse, and often uses that constitutional role to put checks on the administration.

But after Democrats refused to fund Homeland Security earlier this year following the violence in Minnesota, Republicans retaliated by using the congressional budget resolution process to muscle the package through on their own, outside of the traditional appropriations channels.

It’s the same process both parties have used in the past, most recently on Trump’s 2025 tax cuts bill.

“All this important oversight doesn’t happen,” said Bobby Kogan, a former staff member of the Senate Budget Committee and now at the Center for American Progress, a think tank.

Overnight, Democrats in the Senate worked to exert that authority, offering amendments to ensure Congress had some say in the process. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, for example, sought to protect “Dreamers” from deportation as their DACA renewals are being delayed. But those efforts all failed.

Deportations not enough, for some

Meanwhile the administration is under enormous pressure to deliver on its promise to boost deportations to some 1 million a year, after the Republican president’s first year numbers fell short.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, is a leader of the Mass Deportation Coalition that is pushing the Trump administration to stick to its promises.

“Everyone’s talking about ICE is going to get another massive cash injection, and that’s not how I see it at all,” he said. “They’re getting like life-support money.”

“We’re not asking them to keep going,” Howell said. “We’re asking them to start.”

Howell said there’s little chance the Trump administration will be able to reach the president’s deportation goals unless it drops its priority to go after what it calls the “worst of the worst.”

His group put out a framework earlier this year that proposes more comprehensive sweeps to arrest immigrants, particularly in the workplace. He also wants to see the Trump administration make it more difficult for immigrants who are in the U.S. to use the banking system, get social services and obtain drivers licenses. Republicans in Congress have offered bills tackling some of those issues.

The administration has been amping up its own rhetoric and recently posted a new website that characterizes immigrants as “aliens” — with outer-space themes — and suggests ways the White House is working to prevent people from staying in the U.S.