Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Gave Massive Handouts to ICE and Private Prison Industry
On July 4, 2025,President Donald Trump (R) signed into law a budget reconciliation bill (H.R. 1) that drastically increased funding for immigration enforcement and policing. Originally titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the megabill awarded a whopping $170 billion over the next decade to bolster an already sprawling border security and deportation infrastructure. According to the American Immigration Council, $75 billion of these funds was allocated to the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), making it by far the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in the country.
Nearly $30 billion of ICE’s new budget will go toward hiring a target of 10,000 deportation officers, modernizing its fleet of planes, and handing out bonuses to retain current staff. The remaining $45 billion is expected to be spent on building or reopening immigration detention centers, an effort that could result in the daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens–a number that is roughly double the agency’s current capacity. Most of the new detention facilities will likely be run and operated by ICE contractors, such as CoreCivic and The GEO Group, both of which were significant donors to Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign.
Beyond granting a major boon to private prison companies, the legislative package–which is expected to add $3.3 trillion to the national debt by 2035–also benefits police officers by including a provision that cuts federal taxes on overtime pay and adds $5 billion to the Bureau of Prisons budget over the next four years.
Sources: The Marshall Project, The Intercept, CBS News
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