KPBS Border Reporter Gustavo Solis hosted Adam Isacson from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) for a brief conversation about President Donald Trump’s "Big Beautiful Bill." They talk about how an influx of $75 billion will impact immigration arrests, detention and deportations.
This transcription has been edited for brevity and clarity.
President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" just made Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the highest funded federal law enforcement agency in history. They now have more money than the FBI, DEA, ATF and the U.S. Marshals combined.
Today we're going to find out how ICE plans to spend $75 billion. And to help us do that, we have Adam Isacson from the Washington Office on Latin America. It's a research and advocacy organization in Washington D.C. Adam, welcome.
Adam Isacson: Hey, good to be here, Gustavo. Good to see you.
Let’s start with the big picture. I mean, that's a lot of money going to this federal agency. What were your first reactions?
Isacson: We were shocked by its size.
I mean, ICE is a just over $9 billion a year organization. And, as you said, over the next four years, on top of that, they're going to have an extra $75 billion dollars. I mean, the scale of it is enormous.
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Let's start with ICE arrests. We're already seeing daily viral videos of these arrests all over the country.
Here in San Diego, we've seen workplace raids and courthouse arrests. What does this new funding source mean for enforcement going forward?
Isacson: I mean, what we've all been seeing happening in Los Angeles since early June is sort of a proof of concept. This is what they were doing on basically a Biden-era budget. Congress didn't really give a significant increase this year. Now they have far more resources to carry out these kinds of operations.
ICE has about 6,000 deportation officers or Enforcement and Removal Officers who can do these sweeps and arrests. The bill gives the money to hire 10,000 more. So the idea is to more than double — almost triple — the size of this force.
Of course, it takes a while to do the hiring, but in the meantime, there will probably be money to have National Guard — to have other agencies — everybody from DEA to the Bureau of Prisons, and of course, CBP and Border Patrol. The idea is to expand that Los Angeles model to other populations around the United States.
I think I like the way you framed what is happening in LA. It's a proof of concept.
I think it's safe to say we can expect more arrests, which means a lot more people in immigration detention. What will immigration detention look like with this influx of funding? I imagine private prison companies are the big winners here.
Isacson: So once people are arrested, they go into ICE's network of detention centers, many of which are run by for-profit companies. That network had an annual budget of about $3.5 billion a year. This bill over the next four years just gave that network an extra $45 billion. We're talking about increasing its capacity by four, at least in dollar terms.
Right now, there's about 58,000 people languishing in ICE detention. That is way above the 41,000 limit that we saw during the maximum time during the Biden years. And some of the more sober estimates are having at least 125,000 people in custody at any time. That is just almost equal to the number of people in all federal prisons around the United States. It is huge, and $45 billion, nearly all of that will go to contractors.
There are two big private prison and detention companies in the United States: CoreCivic and the GEO Group. Their stock prices have already been going through the roof since election day last year, and they are about to have a big payday.
And then all the other services that go along with that. Everything from guards to plumbers and cafeteria workers and everything else are going to have a humongous payday.
I should note that here in San Diego, CoreCivic is the company that runs the Otay Mesa Detention Center.
Well, let's not forget Trump's main goal here, mass deportations. We're already seeing deportations to third countries like El Salvador and Sudan, even for people who aren't from those countries. What can we expect in the near future when it comes to deportations?
Isacson: Obviously there's a lot of deportations that happen just by land across the Mexican border. But there's another deportation that requires aircraft and it's expensive.
It’s ICE contractors and now, during the Trump administration, a lot of military planes that fly people — often just shackled — to their home countries and, unfortunately, increasingly to third countries.
Our colleague Tom Cartwright, who monitors these flights for Witness at the Border, counted to 209 of these deportation flights in June. Most of them to the Americas but increasingly going to Africa and Asia. How many is 209? If you average February through April, which were sort of normal levels for the Biden era, there's been an increase of 63% already just with the budget they had.
Now ICE’s deportation operations had a budget of about $700 or $800 million a year. This bill gives them $14.4 billion dollars more just over the next four years. So they're going to be able to multiply their capacity to run these flights.
Right, you've already mentioned how this isn't going to happen overnight, they're going to need to invest and spend a lot of this money. ICE is going to have to hire a lot more agents and quickly. Now, I've heard in the past some law enforcement agencies have struggled with rapid expansions like that. Is this something you've looked at?
Isacson: There’s going to be a lot of pressure, as they try to more than double ICE, to lower hiring standards — to just take more warm bodies. Maybe they don't look as closely at their backgrounds, maybe they go easy on the polygraphs. And a fear is you're going to get the kind of person who was attracted by all these videos that have been horrifying us and said, "Hey, give me a crack at that.”
That's scary. But even then, it takes a while to do the background checks they're doing. It takes a while to get them through the academy.
In the meantime, I think they are going to lean hard on the U.S. military. As well as other agencies that are supposed to be looking at everything from child pornography to drug dealing to intellectual property theft.
They're going to be reassigned away from other kinds of crime and being assigned to this immigration enforcement mission.
