President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will pump tens of billions of dollars into law enforcement, delivering an unprecedented bonanza for the agencies behind the US administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Moments after the bill passed through Congress, the White House boasted that it had made the “largest investment in border security in a generation”, providing “nearly $150bn to secure our border and deport illegal aliens”.
The sum would give US Immigration and Customs Enforcement more money on an annual basis combined over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI; Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the US Marshals Service; and Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to American Immigration Council calculations. It is nearly double the UK’s defence budget.