Congress may have 'shut down' DHS, but ICE has money to spare

As lawmakers debate withholding funding for immigration enforcement, they face a financial reality: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) already has enough cash to operate through the end of President Donald Trump's second term.

Democrats and some Republicans are refusing to fund the annual budget for ICE's parent, the Department of Homeland Security, over concerns about the president's aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.

They're demanding deportation officers stop masking in public, stop making arrests in sensitive locations like schools and end the practice of entering homes without a judicial warrant.

The White House has so far rejected the demands, and Homeland Security has been left without a funding allocation for the 2026 fiscal year, resulting in a partial shutdown of the federal government that began Feb. 13. Homeland Security is the parent of more than a dozen different agencies including the Transportation Security Administration, which is responsible for airport security, and FEMA, which deals with disaster response.

But ICE, whose workers are considered essential and stay on the job during a shutdown, isn't hurting for money.

The GOP's signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act – passed solely by Republicans last year in a technical process called "reconciliation" – gave Homeland Security more than $170 billion in funding to conduct immigration enforcement through 2029. That pot is more than double DHS's annual discretionary budget.

Of the funding, ICE walked away with nearly $75 billion, including $30 billion for enforcement and removal operations and hiring new deportation officers, and $45 billion to expand immigration detention.

That "extra" funding is roughly six times the nearly $12 billion ICE received in the 2025 fiscal year.

Bipartisan compromise needed for budget deal

The current debate in Congress concerns Homeland Security's regular annual budget. Democrats and Republicans need to reach a compromise in order to fully reopen the government.

But "reconciliation" is a funding mechanism outside the budget process. Cato Institute policy analyst Dominik Lett argues that reconciliation made ICE shutdown-proof.

"By shifting immigration enforcement and defense spending outside the normal appropriations process, Republicans have short-circuited the system of checks and balances that restrain the growth and abuse of government power," he said in a Feb. 10 analysis.

Reconciliation is a special process that essentially makes it easier for legislation to pass the Senate. The process allows for tax, spending and debt limit bills to be expedited by side-stepping typical congressional hold-ups. 

Ramping up immigration enforcement, detention

ICE is using the reconciliation funding to expand its staff. The agency said in January it had hired 10,000 new agents and officers, more than doubling its employees to 22,000 people.

Amid the deep cuts to the federal workforce from the Department of Government Efficiency, DHS was one of the least impacted agencies. From the 2024 to the 2025 fiscal year, it lost 475 workers, while the Pentagon, for example, lost over 60,000, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. Under the DHS umbrella, FEMA was one of the agencies most affected by the cuts.

With its new funding, the agency has also dramatically ramped up its detention capacity. Where ICE had space to detain roughly 40,000 people per day in January 2025, the agency now has capacity to hold more than 70,000 people per day.

This expansion, however, not only pays for new ICE detention centers, but it also funds bed space in facilities not dedicated to immigration detention full-time, such as county jails.

Lawmakers returned to Congress on Monday, Feb. 23, as the partial shutdown continues. Trump is slated to deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Feb. 24.

Lauren Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY and can be reached at [email protected].

Contributing: Ella Lee, USA TODAY