The American Immigration Council is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. On July 4, 2025, President Donald Trump signed H.R. 1, the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” into law. After months of tense intraparty negotiations, Republicans passed the bill through the reconciliation process. This procedural tool, normally reserved for changes to revenue and spending policy, allows legislation to move forward with a simple majority in the Senate, bypassing the usual 60-vote threshold. The final bill aggressively uses federal funding to pursue sweeping policy goals, particularly around immigration and border enforcement.
H.R. 1 directs $170.7 billion toward immigration and border enforcement to spread over about a four-year period ending in September 2029. Averaged annually, this is two-thirds of the current discretionary budget for the entire Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Notably, rather than making investments in the broader legal immigration system, the law hikes up fees significantly for a wide range of legal protections and benefits, such as asylum, work permits, and requests for Temporary Protected Status. As implementation begins, there are significant questions about the real-world outcomes of this legislation—and whether the system can absorb and manage such a dramatic expansion.
Arrests and Enforcement: Scaling Up Fast, But at What Cost?
With approximately $28 billion given to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) annually, the agency now has a budget larger than the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), U.S. Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons combined. In January, ICE set its internal goal to arrest between 1,500 and 2,000 people per day and only recently in late May partially achieved that artificial quota. Since then, ICE has aimed to arrest as many as 3,000 people per day—a nearly impossible goal before H.R 1. However, since H.R. 1 was signed into law, Tom Homan, a special advisor to President Trump on immigration and border enforcement and a former Acting ICE Director, suggested that number could climb up to 7,000.
This is because the new law provides ICE with enough funding to hire 10,000 new agents, which DHS believes can help it achieve up to one million deportations per year. Given that the funds must be used within four years, ICE must spend them quickly. Under H.R.1, ICE is prepared to offer large bonuses of $10,000 per agent but recruitment at this scale is logistically difficult, and the administration will almost certainly have to reduce historical recruitment standards, training quality, and oversight to increase ICE personnel to such a level in the given period.
Detention Capacity: Rapid Expansion Amid Signs of Strain and No Oversight
The most striking aspect of the new law is its extraordinary investment in detention. H.R. 1 provides $45 billion for the expansion of immigrant detention facilities, including family detention. Averaged annually, this amounts to over $10.6 billion in added detention spending per year, bringing ICE’s annual detention budget to at least $14 billion. That figure is a 311% increase over the agency’s FY 2024 detention budget and is nearly double the entire FY 2025 budget of the Bureau of Prisons. Based on cost estimates ICE provided to Congress, this level of funding could support a detention population of 116,000 individuals by 2029, including new “soft-sided” detention camps.
ICE has been preparing for this infusion of cash for months, having issued a request for proposals in April to find facilities it could use to rapidly expand detention. Several private contractors, including GEO Group and CoreCivic, which dominate the private prison industry, have already modified some of their existing contracts to expand the number of beds for immigration detention and have proposed re-purposing dormant prisons for civil immigration purposes.
Yet even before this expansion begins in earnest, the system is showing signs of strain. As oversight mechanisms have been significantly gutted, reports of overcrowding and lack of food have surfaced. Meanwhile, an analysis of data from June by the CATO Institute shows that of the 204,297 individuals booked into detention since the start of FY 2025, 65% had no criminal convictions, and over 93% had no history of violent offenses. Many were detained for immigration violations, traffic offenses, or other low-level infractions. And this year is on track to surpass last year’s record of deaths of people in ICE’s custody.
State and Local Involvement: Expanding Federal Immigration Enforcement
H.R. 1 sets aside at least $14 billion to reimburse immigration enforcement partnerships with state and local governments. Since January, several executive orders have significantly expanded state and local involvement in immigration enforcement. H.R. 1 includes funding to expand the number of active 287(g) agreements—a program that deputizes local law enforcement to perform federal immigration duties. In a hearing in early May, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem testified that 6,200 local law enforcement officers had been deputized under the 287(g) program, which effectively doubled the number of ICE’s deportation agents. Since January, the program has increased sixfold—from 135 agreements at the beginning of Trump’s second term to 811 as of July 14.
Similarly, through these partnerships, ICE will expand detention even more quickly. In Florida, for instance, state authorities built the Everglades detention camp in eight days, which currently has the capacity to detain 3,000 people—a model that other states are looking to follow. However, concerns about such facilities have grown as several legislators have questioned the facility’s inhumane and unsanitary conditions.
While Mass Deportations Drive Immigration Policy, Other Challenges Remain
Despite the bill’s enormous enforcement spending, less than 8% of the $170.7 billion funding will go to support immigration court processing. As of May 2025, the backlog in immigration courts neared 3.9 million cases. Rather than addressing this through more judges or support staff, H.R. 1 caps the number of immigration judges at 800. This mismatch in funding priorities risks further entrenching delays and arbitrary outcomes.
In addition, H.R. 1 imposes sweeping new and mandatory fees on legal immigration processes, making it harder for people to navigate the system lawfully. While the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the immigration courts, has already begun to charge the new fees, it has not implemented a uniform system to do so, resulting in the rejection of some asylum applications. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has not yet imposed the new fees but has announced its intention to do so soon.
The Trump administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement has also exposed the risks of pursuing mass deportation while sidelining economic and humanitarian realities. In California, ICE raids have triggered labor shortages, with up to 45% of farmworkers abandoning fields out of fear. The administration’s contradictory responses—from suggesting Medicaid recipients can replace deported farmworkers to providing a temporary “pass” for immigrants in certain industries—fails to meaningfully address the U.S. economy’s structural dependence on immigrant labor in agriculture, construction, healthcare, hospitality, and other critical sectors.
There are also concerns that H.R. 1’s massive infusion of enforcement-focused funding will further empower ICE to escalate its aggressive tactics, including racial profiling, warrantless arrests, and even the detention of U.S. citizens. Compounding these concerns is DHS’s ongoing consolidation of federal law enforcement personnel from other agencies—drawing resources away from missions focused on drug enforcement, national security, and other critical priorities. As the implementation of H.R. 1 unfolds, this new era of enforcement risks accelerating the erosion of civil liberties, destabilizing key sectors of the labor force, and undermining the rule of law itself.
