President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to make undocumented immigration his top priority during his second term, promising to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in American history. However, even before he officially reenters the White House, there is a big obstacle he will need to overcome— budget shortfalls.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency that will be tasked with carrying mass deportations, is already facing a $230 million budget shortfall, even before the costs that will be associated with mass deportations, according to a new investigation by NBC News.
As the new year comes, ICE is expected to continue facing budget issues, considering its operations— including detaining and deporting migrants at the current levels' are outpacing the $8.7 billion annual budget currently allocated to it by Congress.
That is without adding the expensive receipt that mass deportations will cost. According to the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration research and advocacy group, Trump's plan for mass deportations will cost more than $88 billion.
There are multiple reasons attributed to ICE's current budget deficit. Two U.S. officials who spoke to NBC News in conditions of anonymity said that the shortfall can be attributed to the agency being historically underfunded and the increased need for ICE to remove migrants who are deemed ineligible for asylum, a number which has increased since June, when the Biden administration changed asylum policy.
With the new government coming in soon, Republicans could appropriate additional funding to ICE as part of the next government spending package, but it would require compromising with Democrats who will almost certainly need to provide votes to pass any bill through regular order.
The GOP has also discussed increasing ICE funds using budget reconciliation, a tool that enables the majority to bypass the mandatory 60-vote threshold to pass legislation related to funding. But the effort is being met with resistance from some in the party who want to save their political capital to extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts later in the year.
NBC's report comes as funding for mass deportation has been a major unanswered question even before Trump's victory on election day.
Trump himself has offered little details as to how his administration will fund his ambitious plans. He even told NBC News' Kristen Welker earlier this month that there is "no price tag" when it comes to carrying out his mass deportation plan.
Similarly, Trump's incoming border czar, Tom Homan, who will be tasked with carrying these deportation operations, has said that funding would most likely have to come from Congress for a long-term operation. He will have no official authority over how much funding he will have for his plans.
"Well, $86 billion in the minimum," Homan said last week about the cost of the deportations on Fox Business' "Sunday Morning Futures," noting that the administration would need an assist from Congress for the funding.
"This operation is going to be expensive to begin with, but in the long run, there's going to be huge tax savings for the American taxpayer," he added, without providing further details about how exactly the funding would be spent or distributed to federal and local agencies or whether allies in Congress have assured the incoming administration that the sum is feasible.
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