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Washington – Building border wall. Improved detention ability. Hire thousands of immigration agents.
The budget bill, narrowly approved by the Senate on Tuesday, includes a massive funding of around $150 billion for immigration and border enforcement. If passed, “one big beautiful bill act” solidifies President Trump’s hard-line legacy on immigration.
The budget bill makes immigration and customs enforcement the highest-funded law enforcement agencies of the federal government, exceeding the current $3.4 billion annual detention budget multiple times. It also charges fees for immigration services that were once free or inexpensive, making it easier for local law enforcement to work with federal authorities on immigration.
The 940-page Senate bill returns to the House of Representatives, which passed the version in May with a vote of 215-214. The two chambers will need to adjust two versions of the bill.
Although the law is still evolving, the immigration clauses in the House and Senate versions are similar and are not subject to intense debate on other issues such as Medicaid and taxes.
Many of the funds will be available for four years, but some have longer or shorter timelines. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that if enacted, the bill would increase the deficit by at least $3.3 trillion.
The next 10 years.
The key factors regarding immigration include:
Boundary wall
$46.5 billion to strengthen the US-Mexico border wall and block immigrant smugglers at sea.
This includes the construction of barrier sections and access roads, as well as the installation of barrier-related technologies such as cameras, lights and sensors. The law does not refer to any particular location.
In his first term, Trump repeatedly vowed that Mexico would pay for the wall. I didn’t do that.
Personnel allocation
$32 billion for immigration enforcement, including ice staffing and expanding the so-called 287(g) contract. State and local law enforcement agencies will partner with federal authorities to deport immigrants. $7 billion to hire border patrol agents, customs officers at ports of entry, aviation agents and field support staff. Hold bonus; and vehicle. $3.3 billion to hire immigration judges and support staff, among other provisions.
Trump says he wants to hire 10,000 ice agents and 3,000 Border Patrol agents.
detention
$45 billion to build and operate immigration detention facilities and transport deported people. $5 billion and improvements to existing facilities and checkpoints for new customs and border security facilities. It is unclear how this will affect the Interstate 5 border patrol checkpoints near California or San Onofre.
The bill pending removal decisions allow families to be detained indefinitely.
. Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Center for Immigration Law, has been in place since 1977 and is called a blatant violation of the so-called Flores settlement agreement, which has been restricted to legally detaining children for 20 days.
Local support
$13.5 billion to reimmigration-related costs to state and local governments. These are split into two funding funds: $10 billion for the Border Security Reinforcement Fund and two “Nationwidely Experienced Immigration-related Deficits” or the Biden Fund. Both fund arrests by local law enforcement agencies of immigrants who have illegally entered the United States and committed crimes.
“You can think of it like a gift [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott,” Altman said.
Immigration costs
A fee of at least $100 for those seeking asylum, from the $1,000 fee outlined in the House bill. Applicants also pay $100 each year. The application is pending. This is unprecedented. No fees have been charged on immigrants who fled persecution. At least $550 ($275 on renewal) to apply for asylum applications, humanitarian parole, and employment permits for people with temporary protected status. Currently, there is no fee for asylum seekers, and others will cost $470. It’s up from the temporary protection status of at least $500, up from $50.
The fees listed are minimal. The bill allows for annual increases and for many, it prohibits exemptions based on financial needs.
“The fee paradox in the employment approval document is that you are not allowed to work, but you have to pay the fee,” said Kathleen Bush Joseph, a policy analyst at the Institute for Non-Participation Immigration Policy.
Altman pointed out that imposing an annual fee on asylum seekers for pending applications would punish people due to the US government’s repulsion system that is out of the applicant’s control.
Other sections exclude legally presenting immigrants such as refugees and immigrants granted asylum from benefits such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Programs. Another provision excludes the child from the child’s tax credit if the parent does not have a Social Security number.
Praise and light corn
Altman, who has closely tracked the immigration aspects of the funding bill, said people can see the law in two ways. The big picture is as a $15 billion injection to fill what the Trump administration has already started — or surgically, even uniformly a corrupt system and even capture the most basic needs.
Bush Joseph had a different view. She said funding will be strengthening an outdated and inflexible immigration system without radical change.
“That’s why all this money goes to the border, even though there aren’t many people here right now,” she said.
Money alone won’t change things in one night, Bush Joseph said. It takes time to hire people and open detention facilities. Immigration judges still have a large backlog. And it’s difficult to make foreign countries agree to accept more deportees.
“Arresting and detaining people with private contractors will not result in an agreement from El Salvador to take five planes a week,” she said.
At a White House event Thursday, Trump urged Congress to pass the bill quickly, saying it would be “the most important part of border laws to come across Congressional floors.”
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, one of the three GOP senators who voted against the bill on Tuesday, wrote about X calling it “reckless spending.”
Throughout the political aisle, Democrats, including California Sen. Alex Padilla, denounced the bill, saying immigration-related funding would increase to major policy changes.
“I think for a moment, Republicans will take this reconciliation process as an opportunity to do what they said before they wanted to do and modernize our country’s immigration system,” Padilla said last month. “But they aren’t.”
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