Congress has withheld funding from the Department of Homeland Security over concerns about immigration enforcement. But ICE remains well-funded.
Impact of government shutdown on travel
If there is a potential partial government shutdown, FAA funding will not be affected, but TSA funding will.
Lawmakers are facing fiscal realities as they debate withholding funding for immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) already has enough funding to last until the end of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Democrats and some Republicans have refused to provide annual funding to ICE’s parent company, the Department of Homeland Security, citing concerns about the president’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement.
They are demanding that deportation officials stop wearing masks in public, stop making arrests in sensitive areas such as schools, and stop entering homes without judicial warrants.
The White House has so far rejected the request, leaving the Department of Homeland Security unfunded for fiscal year 2026, resulting in a partial federal government shutdown starting Feb. 13. The Department of Homeland Security is home to more than a dozen different agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration, which handles airport security, and FEMA, which handles disaster response.
But ICE employees are considered essential and will continue to work during the shutdown, so they won’t be hurt financially.
The Republican signature “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (passed last year exclusively by Republicans in a technical process called “reconciliation”) gave the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion to carry out immigration enforcement through 2029. That amount is more than double DHS’s annual discretionary budget.
Of the funds, ICE received approximately $75 billion. Of that amount, $30 billion was earmarked for deportation operations and the hiring of new deportation workers, and $45 billion was earmarked for expanded immigration detention.
This “extra” funding is about six times the roughly $12 billion ICE received in fiscal year 2025.
Budget deal requires bipartisan compromise
The current debate in Congress concerns the Department of Homeland Security’s regular annual budget. Democrats and Republicans will need to compromise to fully reopen the government.
However, “adjustment” is a funding mechanism that is outside of the budget process. Dominic Lett, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, argued that the settlement does not prevent ICE from being shut down.
“By moving immigration enforcement and defense spending outside the normal spending process, Republicans are short-circuiting the system of checks and balances that restrain the expansion and abuse of government power,” he said in a Feb. 10 analysis.
Reconciliation is essentially a special process that makes it easier for bills to pass the Senate. This process allows for faster consideration of tax, spending, and debt limitation bills by avoiding typical legislative obstruction.
Strengthening immigration control and detention
ICE is using the settlement funds to expand its staff. In January, the agency announced it was hiring 10,000 new officers and staff, doubling its workforce to 22,000.
DHS was one of the least affected agencies in the Department of Government Efficiency’s deep cuts to the federal workforce. From fiscal year 2024 to 2025, the Department of Defense lost 475 employees, for example, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. FEMA, part of DHS, was one of the agencies hardest hit by the layoffs.
With the new funding, the agency has also dramatically increased its detention capacity. ICE had the capacity to hold about 40,000 people per day in January 2025, but now has the capacity to hold more than 70,000 people per day.
But this expansion would not only pay for new ICE detention centers, it would also fund bed space in facilities that do not specialize full-time in immigration detention, such as county jails.
Lawmakers returned to Parliament on Monday, February 23, as the partial shutdown continues. President Trump is scheduled to deliver the State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 24th.
Lauren Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY. Contact him at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
Contributor: Ella Lee, USA TODAY
