What’s in the Secure America Act?

On June 10, 2026, President Donald Trump signed into law the Secure America Act. For the second time in less than a year, Congress used a budgetary process called “reconciliation” to pour billions of dollars into immigration enforcement. This process allows Congress to bypass the normal rules in the Senate that require at least 60 votes to pass legislation. As a result, only a simple majority vote is needed in both chambers. In recent years, this process has been used when one party controls both Congress and the presidency as it does not require votes from members of the minority party. However, all provisions in a reconciliation bill must relate to the federal budget, funding, or the debt-limit. As a result, reconciliation is a tool for the majority party to advance federal funding needs based on its policy priorities. 

Congress passed the Secure America Act on June 9, 2026, using the reconciliation process to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and parts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), subagencies within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The bill gives ICE and CBP a total of $69.5 billion dollars until September 30, 2029, which includes almost an entire fiscal year of the next president’s first term following the 2028 election. This funding adds to the $170 billion dollars that DHS received last summer in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which also lasts through September 30, 2029.  

With the passage of the Secure America Act, Congress has now provided nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars to DHS through the budget reconciliation process in less than a year, nearly all of which has been focused on immigration enforcement. 

While ICE and CBP’s budgets usually go through the regular government funding process, that process broke down earlier this year. Democrats demanded reforms to immigration enforcement policies and practices. However, those efforts failed, and as of the passage of the Secure America Act, ICE and CBP have still not received funding through the normal appropriations process. 

Instead, Republicans used the reconciliation process to fund these agencies. The Secure America Act passed by a 52-47 largely party line vote in the Senate with one Republican senator joining all Democratic and Independent senators to vote against the bill. In the House, the vote was 214-212, mostly along party lines as well. 

What funding is in the Secure America Act? 

The Secure America Act provides $69.5 billion in funding for immigration- and border enforcement-related activities, all to be spent by September 30, 2029. The bill, however, does not require DHS, ICE, or CBP to allocate or spend any of the money in any given year. This means the government can decide how quickly, or how slowly, to spend it. In addition, there are no limitations on whether the agencies can request more funds in the future through the regular government funding process.  

Importantly, the bill does not provide any funding for non-enforcement-related functions of ICE, such as operating the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (which verifies compliance of foreign students, among other things), leaving the status of those governmental functions uncertain given the delay in passing an annual appropriations bill for DHS. 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Funding 

Under the Secure America Act, ICE will receive $38.5 billion—nearly four times its annual FY 2025 budget. Most of this funding is allocated towards hiring new ICE officers and carrying out immigration enforcement functions, including transporting noncitizens between detention centers and for deportations, as well as other mission support functions for ICE’s deportation operations. 

The bill includes a substantial focus on enforcement against states and localities that do not participate in federal immigration enforcement. For example, it specifically allocates $350 million for ICE enforcement operations in cities and states that do not participate in 287(g) agreements, which authorizes certain local law enforcement officers to make immigration arrests and carry out other federal immigration enforcement functions; or for ICE operations in states that DHS claims have violated federal statutes that limit restrictions on communication with the federal authorities about an individuals’ immigration or citizenship status.  

The bill also directs the agencies to use this $350 million to target a broadly defined category of noncitizens in these non-cooperating cities and localities, including those merely charged but not yet convicted of a wide range of offenses. It places restrictions on ICE’s authority to use this funding to release any person from detention in this broad category. The exact impact of this restriction is unclear; it could expand the population subject to mandatory detention and further increase demand for detention capacity, or it could have no impact at all because ICE can use other funds to release the person as required. 

Like the OBBBA, the Secure America Act allows ICE funding to be used to reimburse state and local governments that participate in 287(g) agreements. This is particularly notable given the rapid growth of the 287(g) program since January 2025, with over 1,900 jurisdictions having signed such agreements as of the start of June, up from 135 at the start of Trump’s second term. Together, these provisions will provide substantial new federal resources to further integrate state and local law enforcement officials into federal immigration enforcement efforts. 

The bill also designates $7.5 billion for ICE’s Homeland Security and Investigations (HSI), whose mission is focused on criminal investigations. Under the bill, $108.5 million must be used to hire personnel and train state and local law enforcement officials regarding child exploitation. Although the bill allocates these dollars for criminal investigations, HSI has in the past, and recently, been involved in routine immigration enforcement actions—including low-level immigration arrests. In fact, HSI has used “wellness checks” on children to arrest noncitizens suspected of being undocumented. Because the Secure America Act doesn’t include specific reporting and oversight provisions, it is unclear how or whether these restrictions on HSI’s funding will be enforced by Congress. 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Funding 

CBP will receive $26 billion for border security operations. Again, this funding is available until 2029, but there are no constraints on it being used sooner. The 2026 annual appropriations bill funded a significant part of CBP but excluded border security-related programs.  

The Secure America Act specifically provides funding for border-related operations, including for U.S. Border Patrol and support personnel. In total, Congress provided $13 billion to hire, pay, train, equip, and support CBP officers to carry out immigration enforcement activities. This funding could be used for both the Border Patrol and CBP officers that operate at ports of entry to screen incoming passengers.  

In addition, Congress provided $9.6 billion to hire, pay, train, and equip Border Patrol agents in particular, as well as Border Patrol support personnel. This funding specifically limits the ability of the Border Patrol to use the funds to hire more “processing coordinators” after October 31, 2028. This position was created during the first Trump administration to support Border Patrol agents processing asylum-seeking migrants.  

The reconciliation bill also provides $3.45 billion for CBP for a variety of other purposes, including the expansion of non-intrusive inspection technology at ports of entry, border surveillance technology (including autonomous surveillance towers), combatting drug trafficking, implementing a biometric entry/exit system at ports of entry, as well as general funding for CBP mission support for its operations that are not directly related to immigration enforcement or customs enforcement. 

Department of Homeland Security – General Funds 

In addition, the bill includes $5 billion for DHS to generally implement the provisions of the bill. These “general funds,” which provide significant sums of money without detailing specific purposes for the agency, are like those created in last year’s reconciliation bill, the OBBBA, which included a $10 billion “safeguarding the border” fund for DHS. 

Earlier this year, DHS used most of these funds to pay Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers during the longest government shutdown in United States history, raising questions about whether the funds were used for their intended purpose.  

Table 1: Secure America Act Spending by Department/Agency

Table 2: Secure America Act Spending by Category 

How does the Secure America Act’s funding compare to ICE and CBP’s previous funding? 

ICE and CBP are already among the most highly funded law enforcement agencies in the federal government. In recent years, Congress has repeatedly increased funding to both agencies through its annual appropriations process.  

The Secure America Act adds to the funding provided by the OBBBA, passed last year, which included $170.7 billion for immigration- and border enforcement-related activities to DHS, ICE, CBP and the Department of Defense (DOD) for activities related to the military’s presence along parts of the southern border.  

The funding allocated in the Secure America Act combined with the $75 billion ICE already received last year through the OBBBA, will give ICE more than eleven times its 2025 budget. While the funds from both bills can be used through 2029, the Congressional Budget Office determined that there was considerable uncertainty over the actual pace of spending given the lack of guardrails in the bill text. Additionally, if Congress also passes an annual appropriations bill for ICE, those funds would be added on top of the significant funding provided in both the OBBBA and the Secure America Act.  

The Secure America also gives DHS a nearly blank check for $5 billion in “general funds,” on top of its annually appropriated amount, to fund the broad categories of activities identified in the bill. The Trump administration has so far been able to rely on its own interpretations about how to use similar funds provided under the OBBBA. For example, the OBBBA created a similar $10 billion DHS fund that was available through September 2029, yet DHS had already spent nearly 86% of those funds by April 2026—less than a year after the bill’s enactment. This suggests that, absent more specific congressional direction or oversight, DHS may have significant flexibility to determine both how quickly and for what purposes these funds are used. 

What is the effect of funding the federal immigration enforcement agencies through reconciliation rather than the regular funding process? 

Funding ICE and parts of CBP outside of the regular appropriations process removes many of the tools Congress typically uses to direct and oversee how taxpayer dollars are spent. Unlike annual funding bills, reconciliation legislation generally does not include detailed explanatory statements, committee reports, or other guidance that clarify congressional intent, establish spending priorities, or require agencies to provide specific information to Congress. As a result, lawmakers may have far less visibility into how funds are used and fewer opportunities to hold agencies accountable for their spending decisions.  

The bill also lacks many of the oversight and accountability measures that are routinely incorporated into annual appropriations bills, such as restrictions on the use of detention for pregnant women, language limiting the sharing of data between ICE and the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s unaccompanied migrant children program, and requirements that ICE provide access to detention centers to members of Congress. 

The structure of the funding also gives DHS substantial discretion over the timing of expenditures. Although the bill provides funding through September 30, 2029, recent experience suggests agencies may spend the money much more quickly than the funding timeline implies. For example, ICE received $45 billion last year through the OBBBA for immigration detention to be used through 2029, but reporting indicates that ICE planned to use the overwhelming majority ($38 billion) of it within the first two years to convert commercial warehouses into immigration detention centers. 

DHS is currently on track to obligate approximately 75 percent of the immigration enforcement funding provided in H.R. 1 by September 30, 2027, despite that funding also being available through 2029. This flexibility allows agencies to rapidly expand operations with limited congressional input once the funds are appropriated. 

The broader precedent may be just as important as the funding itself. While reconciliation has been used in recent years to provide additional resources for immigration enforcement and deportation operations, this marks the first time the process has been used to provide such large-scale funding directly to agencies instead of through the regular appropriations process. If this approach becomes more common, it could fundamentally alter future budget negotiations by shifting significant funding decisions away from the annual appropriations process, where Congress traditionally exercises its most robust oversight and control over federal spending.