No. of Recommendations: 9
As we've discussed before, ICE has
never had the funding to conduct the level of interior enforcement and deportation that the Trump Administration has wanted. Despite claims to the contrary, there really was a
structural limit to what ICE could do with the millions of folks that have been in the country for a while. It wasn't really that prior Administrations (GOP and Democratic) were turning a blind eye - they were just enforcing up to the limits of the resources that Congress was appropriating for that purpose.
Anyway, that gave rise to John Thune's suggestion to have
two reconciliation packages - one that contained a ton of money for border enforcement that could get passed quickly, while the more difficult measure with all the tax and spending issues would inevitably take more time. The GOP passed on that approach. So now the pinch point of constrained resources is showing:
Trump’s vow to quickly remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the country has faced a number of roadblocks. The administration has run up against a bogged-down immigration court system as well as challenges with detention space and staffing, spreading ICE agents thin as they work to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants this year — four times as many as last year.
“We should understand that until they have that money and can start to spend that money, no one should really think that they can start raising the deportation numbers that much,” said Michael Kagan, director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Immigration Clinic. “They need that money, and that is the first step for expanding detention space.”https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/05/trump-dep...The money
matters. Without vastly more resources, you can't have vastly more deportations. ICE claims it's deported about 65K people since Trump took office, which prorates to "only" about 300K for the year - now where close to what Trump has promised. ICE needs to have that more money to up their deportation numbers, and it will take them
time to spin up even when they get that extra money. A Thune "small unassuming bill" on just border and energy could have been passed in early March, while the BBB might linger on deep into the summer. Which is going to make it
very difficult for the Administration to put up large deportation numbers prior to the midterms. They'll be able to get the
rate pretty high leading into late 2026, but it's going to be hard for them to have deported even a million people over their first two years, let alone annually.
