Two months ago, Democrats said they would not give another cent to immigration enforcement without reforms to curb officers’ tactics. But 59 days into a record-long Department of Homeland Security shutdown, those demands have produced no policy changes, while President Trump’s immigration crackdown continues largely uninterrupted.
That is largely because Republicans gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement an extra $75 billion last year with few conditions. The funding, added to ICE’s roughly $10 billion annual budget through a party-line reconciliation measure known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, made ICE the most highly funded federal law-enforcement agency. Other DHS components, including Customs and Border Protection, received tens of billions more.
Republicans passed the measure without Democratic support by using reconciliation, a process that avoids the Senate filibuster. Democrats, who have used reconciliation themselves in recent years, argued the ICE money was effectively a blank check. Sam Bagenstos, then-general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Biden, called it “a massive shoveling of cash to an agency with few if any strings.”
The issue came into sharper focus about six months after the bill’s passage when immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Democrats vowed to tie future ICE and Border Patrol funding to reforms — for example, requiring judicial warrants for home entries and banning officers from wearing masks. Article I gives Congress the power of the purse as a key check on the executive branch, but the new infusion of cash has undercut that leverage, Bagenstos says. With substantial funding already secured, ICE can tell lawmakers it does not need additional appropriations, limiting Congress’s ability to influence agency behavior.
The current shutdown has shown the practical effects. While many DHS employees — like Transportation Security Administration workers — have been forced to work without pay, most ICE and Border Patrol operations continued largely unaffected because of the earlier funding surge. The administration also used an executive order to pay some employees, another way of sidestepping Congress.
The windfall has allowed ICE to hire thousands of agents, expand detention capacity, and even buy warehouses to hold more detainees. Private prison companies such as CoreCivic and Geo Group benefited; they spent millions lobbying in 2025, including in support of the reconciliation bill. Critics say the large, flexible pot of money came with few guardrails, increasing risks of waste, limited oversight, and misconduct.
John Sandweg, who served as acting ICE director and acting DHS general counsel in the Obama administration, said the normal appropriations process forces agencies to defend their spending and operations annually — a “tempering influence” that creates accountability. When Congress attaches conditions and requires testimony, lawmakers can press for changes. With broad, pre-approved funding, that influence is weakened.
Some spending choices have drawn scrutiny. Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem used part of the money to purchase two luxury jets and awarded a multimillion-dollar ad contract to a firm with ties to her and advisers, prompting criticism. ICE has also relied more on limited or no-bid contracts as it scales up operations. Sandweg warned that large sums spent with limited oversight create vulnerabilities to fraud and misconduct.
DHS’s new secretary, Markwayne Mullin, has moved to reverse some of Noem’s controversial contracting policies. DHS responded to oversight concerns by saying the department remains subject to congressional scrutiny and blamed Democrats for prolonging the shutdown. Democrats counter that the pre-funding move robbed them of leverage they need to press for reforms.
Republicans defend the reconciliation route as proper and necessary. Senate Majority Leader John Thune argued Democrats were overreaching by trying to withhold funding, saying regular appropriations require 60 votes to clear a filibuster and that Republicans “prefunded” ICE for that reason. Top Republicans are now weighing using reconciliation again to fund ICE and Border Patrol for the remainder of Trump’s term, a step that would bypass Democratic demands. Senator Ted Cruz has even suggested funding ICE through reconciliation for a decade, asserting Democrats may never again vote to fund the agency.
Bagenstos and others see a broader constitutional concern: increasing executive bypasses of Congress on spending matters. The administration has at times refused to spend funds Congress appropriated (for example, foreign aid) and has spent funds without new appropriations (such as paying DHS employees during the shutdown). Sidestepping the regular appropriations process erodes Congress’s role as the branch closest to the people and the holder of the power of the purse — a power the framers viewed as essential to preventing executive overreach.
“If Congress doesn’t stand up,” Bagenstos warns, “I don’t see why every executive in the future isn’t going to follow some playbook like this.”
