Observers film Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they hold a perimeter after one of their vehicles got a flat tire on Penn Avenue in Minneapolis on Feb. 5.
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Two months ago, Democrats in Congress said they would not give immigration enforcement agencies another cent without reforms to limit the tactics of their officers.
But 59 days into a record-long Department of Homeland Security shutdown, that strategy has resulted in none of the policy changes they have demanded, while President Trump’s immigration crackdown is still operating at full speed.
That is thanks to congressional Republicans, who gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement a $75 billion windfall last year with few strings attached — money that has helped insulate ICE from congressional pressure and oversight.
And as Congress returns from a two-week recess, top Republicans are making plans to skirt Democrats again to ensure ICE and Customs and Border Protection have funding through the end of Trump’s term.
“A massive shoveling of cash”
With the South Portico adorned in red, white and blue bunting, the White House’s Fourth of July celebration last summer doubled as a signing ceremony for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Republicans passed it by circumventing Democrats with a tool known as budget reconciliation. Trump called the law, which cut taxes, slashed Medicaid and eliminated clean energy tax credits, the “biggest bill of its type in history.”
That big bill also included $75 billion in new funding for ICE, on top of the agency’s annual funding, which is usually only about $10 billion. The infusion made ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency. Other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including Customs and Border Protection, also received tens of billions of dollars in additional funding.
Democrats have used this party-line reconciliation maneuver too, including in 2021 to approve billions of dollars in COVID-19 relief money.
But Sam Bagenstos, who was general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget at the time under President Joe Biden, says this ICE funding is not a collection of targeted funds. Instead, it is more like a blank check.
“Here what we have is just a massive shoveling of cash to an agency with few if any strings,” he says. “I can’t think of an example that’s anywhere close to that.”
The expansive pot of money received renewed scrutiny roughly six months after Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act when immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Democrats pledged to fund ICE and Border Patrol only if the White House agreed to reforms, like requiring judicial warrants to enter homes and banning officers from wearing masks.
Article I of the Constitution says Congress holds the purse strings — a key check on the executive.
“But if turns out Congress had already taken away its ability to do that by passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which gave ICE enough money that they can say to Congress, ‘Yeah, sorry, we don’t need to come back to you for money, and there’s nothing you can do to us,'” Bagenstos says.
“A tempering influence on the agency”
The fight over ICE tactics has been at a standstill for two months, leaving DHS without the regular annual funding that Congress is required to approve for all federal agencies.
The lack of funding would typically impact an entire agency. But this shutdown has been different. Unlike airport security employees who worked without pay for weeks, most ICE and Border Patrol operations continued largely unimpaired due to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Trump also signed an executive order to pay other workers, circumventing Congress again.
That flood of money has also allowed ICE to hire thousands of agents and expand the number of detention center beds, even moving to purchase warehouses to house more detainees.
The influx of funding has been a boon for private prison companies, like CoreCivic and Geo Group, which spent millions of dollars on lobbying in 2025, including in favor of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director and acting DHS general counsel during the Obama administration, says having to ask Congress for money every year makes agencies more responsive to concerns or requests for information from lawmakers.
“Having that appropriations mechanism where you have to get up there and defend what you did and how you did it every year — that is a tempering influence on the agency,” he says. “You might get a call from a senior member of the Appropriations Committee. Those calls resulted in a lot more changes.”
When Congress gives an agency money, lawmakers usually attach specific guidelines for how that money should be spent. Sandweg says the $75 billion has very few specific guardrails.
Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem used some of it to buy two luxury jets and has drawn criticism for awarding a multimillion-dollar ad contract to a firm with ties to her and top aides. ICE has also drawn questions from lawmakers for relying more on limited or no-bid contracts as the agency races to scale up capacity.
“When you have tens and tens of billions of dollars that can be easily spent with very limited oversight and no fear that you’re going to have problems in the next fiscal year with Congress, you have created a real vulnerability to fraud or misconduct,” Sandweg says.
The new DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, has moved to roll back some of Noem’s spending policies. Democrats say the shutdown fight helped prompt the changes, despite no agreement between Congress and the White House on the list of legislative demands that Democrats are pressing for.
“DHS is still subject to congressional oversight,” a DHS spokesperson wrote in a statement. “The ‘misconduct’ that needs to be corrected is the Democrats’ longest government shutdown in U.S. history.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., is depicted on a television next to him as he prepares to do a television interview on April 2 after the Senate passed a Department of Homeland Security funding bill by unanimous consent.
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Republicans say Democrats are “stretching it”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says by withholding funding, Democrats are going beyond oversight, obstructing a basic responsibility of Congress because regular appropriations bills require 60 votes to overcome the Senate filibuster.
“Obviously the Democrats are stretching it by messing with the appropriations process in a way that was never intended,” Thune told reporters.
Thune says that’s why Republicans “prefunded” ICE with that $75 billion.
Senate Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement to fund DHS, except ICE and Border Patrol, but the House has yet to vote on the Senate-passed deal amid pushback from House Republicans.
Now top Republicans say they will use that same party-line tool again to fund ICE and Border Patrol for the rest of Trump’s term, without having to acquiesce to Democrats’ demands for reforms.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says Democrats are blocking Trump’s mandate from voters to execute his immigration agenda. He has proposed using reconciliation to fund ICE for a decade.
“I think we may very well be in a world where these Senate Democrats will never again vote to fund ICE,” Cruz told Fox News.
Power of the purse in crisis?
Bagenstos, now a law and public policy professor at the University of Michigan, sees a different threat as the White House bypasses Congress on funding in all sorts of ways.
The administration has refused to spend money Congress has appropriated, like for foreign aid, and has spent money that Congress has not appropriated, like to pay DHS employees despite a shutdown.
And though lawmakers did sign off on giving ICE that $75 billion, Bagenstos says sidestepping the regular funding process is one more way Congress has surrendered power.
“We really are at a moment when the power of the purse is in a crisis,” he says.
Bagenstos says the Constitution’s framers gave Congress that appropriations power because they saw the legislative branch as closest to the people.
“They disagreed about almost everything in the construction of our government, but one thing that people across the board agreed on was that the legislature should have the power of the purse,” he says.
If Congress checks out, Bagenstos says, that increases the risk of tyranny from the executive.
“If Congress doesn’t stand up, I don’t see why every executive in the future isn’t going to follow some playbook like this,” he says.
