On June 9, 2026, Congress passed the Secure America Act, which grants the Trump Administration another $70 billion for mass deportations and detention. This is less than a year after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or the Big Ugly Bill, which handed the President a never-before-seen amount of $170 billion through 2029 for his cruel immigration crackdown.

As Heidi Altman and Ben D’Avanzo write, the new ICE funding law should be called the ICE First, Families Last Act because it prioritizes Trump’s mass deportation agenda and neglects a primary concern of families in the United States: the cost of living crisis. Not only does this law avoid addressing what people need to get by, such as rent, groceries, electric bills, and medical bills, this law places ICE and Border Patrol further above the law. With this money, ICE and Border Patrol have been given the green light to continue to lock people up in inhumane detention centers and to send them to countries against their will, often without due process. 

The combination of these funding laws is a staggering $240 BILLION for the systematic separation of families and disruption of communities through 2029. This sum is greater than the GDP of 161 countries. If masked mass deportation agents were a country, they would be the 57th wealthiest country in the world. Trump’s mass deportation agenda was implemented only a year ago, but it has quickly become flush with funds. The $240 billion combined total equates to eight typical years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol authorized in a single year.  

Both bills have become law through the fast-track process of reconciliation, which only requires a simple majority (51 votes) to pass the Senate, as opposed to the normal 60 votes. Both funding laws ensure that ICE and Border Patrol have a money pot to fall on through September 2029 and were passed without accountability measures, allowing these agencies to continue to recklessly harm countless families. 

The ICE First, Families Last Act ($70 billion) includes:

• $38.5 billion for ICE to hire more agents and continue to detain and deport families;
• $26 billion to CBP to hire more agents and scale up surveillance and enforcement at entry points; and 
• $5 billion to the Department of Homeland Security to support mass deportations and detention. 

The $240 billion windfall from these two pieces of legislation don’t come from just anywhere. They are paid for by deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP - two essential and popular programs that respectively provide healthcare and food aid to millions of working families. The impact of the Big Ugly Bill is seismic, estimated to strip away health insurance from an estimated 16 million people by 2034. Some of the worst effects are already being felt - at least 4 million people have lost access to SNAP aid since the Big Ugly Bill was enacted in July 2025. 

At the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, we found that $240 billion to fuel the deadly mass deportation machine could do all of this, instead:

• Fully restore Medicaid cuts from the Big Ugly Bill ($91 billion),
• Fully restore SNAP cuts from the Big Ugly Bill ($18.6 billion),
• Provide medical care for more than 1 million veterans through 2029 ($71.6 billion),
• Power over 10 million households with solar energy through 2029 ($17 billion),
• Establish universal preschool for kids across the U.S. ($35 billion), and
• Make school lunches free for all 30 million children served ($6.38 billion).

And the not-so cherry on top? In addition to the $240 billion boost for mass deportations and detention from these two funding laws, House Republicans are asking for nearly $30 billion more for fiscal year 2027. 

Families need to be put first. We can’t let ICE and Border Patrol continue to harm our communities while we struggle to pay our bills and afford groceries. Congress should claw back the $240 billion for mass deportations and detention, and not consider a dollar more. 

Read more in detail about the contents of the ICE First, Families Last Act:

• What’s in Congress’s New ICE Funding Law? - National Immigration Law Center
• What’s in the Secure America Act? - American Immigration Council