What’s in the 2025 Reconciliation Bill So Far? 

House of Representatives

On April 29, 2025, the Homeland Security Committee advanced its spending recommendations which primarily focused on two agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). On May 21, 2025, the House Rules Committee approved the addition of $12 billion to reimburse states for costs borne due to immigration- and border-related enforcement. In addition, the Armed Services Committee approved its recommendations, which includes border-related funding for the Department of Defense.

On April 30, 2025, the Judiciary Committee also advanced its recommendations, primarily focusing on two other DHS agencies, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), as well as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of State, and Department of Justice (DOJ).

Senate

On June 12, 2025, the Senate Judiciary committee published its recommendations to fund DHS, including ICE, and the Department of Justice (DOJ).  The same day two sets of recommendations for Homeland Security were published; one by Senator Lindsey Graham, chair of the Budget Committee, and the other by Senator Rand Paul, chair of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs (HSGAC) Committee. Sen. Paul’s proposal cut the House’s Homeland Security spending recommendations in half while Sen. Graham indicated that his proposal aims to “fully fund” President Trump’s immigration agenda of “mass deportation” at an amount requested by the administration. Sen. Graham’s proposal was largely incorporated into the final Senate bill after several provisions were determined to violate reconciliation rules by the Parliamentarian.

Overall, the Senate and House of Representatives bills provide dramatic funding increases to immigration- and border enforcement-related funding provisions while implicitly driving dramatic changes to immigration policy. Because these funds are provided through reconciliation—and not the regular appropriations process—they do not include guidelines and directives about how the funds must be used which prevents members of Congress from conducting meaningful oversight on the use of these federal dollars. Importantly, these funds all need to be spent by September 30, 2029. However, the agencies receiving these funds would have significant discretion as to how to spend them over the next 51 months.

Legal Immigration and Relief from Removal

Both the Senate and House Judiciary bills risk turning humanitarian immigration into a pay-to-play system by significantly increasing fees on everything from asylum applications and work permits to family reunification and humanitarian protections like Temporary Protected Status (TPS), as well as on applications seeking relief from removal by individuals facing deportation in immigration court. The fees would also impact those seeking visas, with a new $250 “visa bond” for all nonimmigrant visas, which could be reimbursed only after the visa expired and only if the visa holder could prove they had a record of perfect compliance.

These fees, many of which could be layered on top of existing fees and are largely mandatory, could effectively put legal pathways out of reach for thousands of people. Take, for example, the new proposed fees for an asylum applicant, which in the Senate bill is $100 to apply, plus an additional $100 for every year the application is pending. Under the new fees in the Senate bill, an asylum seeker who must wait at least 5 years to obtain a decision in the heavily backlogged immigration system would have to pay: $100 (new application fee), $550 for their first work authorization document, and $100 every year for a pending application would result in at least $1,150 in filing fees during the 5-year wait.

The new fees propose placing the burden of the backlogged immigration system on the applicants themselves. The steep fees would effectively block access to those unable to afford them given the compounding barriers of increasing fees throughout the application process.

Byrd Bath Update: The Senate bill makes several changes to the House bill’s immigration fee provisions based on the Senate’s Parliamentarian rulings that some of these were excessive and violate reconciliation rules. See Table 1 below for more details on fees.

Detention

Both the Senate and House reconciliation bills provide $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. When averaged out over the next 51 months, this would constitute an additional $10.6 billion for detention per year through Fiscal Year 2029, bringing ICE’s total detention budget to a minimum of $14 billion per year. This amount would represent a 308 percent increase on an annual basis over ICE’s FY 2024 detention budget. By comparison, the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons budget was $8.6 billion in FY 2025. The overwhelming majority of the funding for ICE detention would go to private companies contracted to build and run detention facilities.

Based on an estimate of detention costs that ICE provided to Congress in January 2025, we estimate that an additional $10.6 billion for detention per year could likely fund an increase in ICE detention to at least 116,000 beds, with $6 billion per year spent on contracting with existing detention centers and $8 billion per year spent on building and operating new “soft-sided” detention camps consisting primarily of tents and trailers.

However, because ICE is not required to spend this money evenly across the next 51 months, ICE could ultimately reach a higher detention population by September 30, 2029. The Senate bill also provides $3.5 billion for state and local cooperation with ICE, which could lead to states constructing their own “soft-sided” detention centers and leasing them to ICE, as Florida has already done. Therefore, the bill could lead to an increase in ICE detention to 125,000 beds or higher — only just a bit below the current population of the entire federal prison system.

In addition to authorizing more detention, both bills seek to use funding provisions to dismantle core legal protection for children by implicitly overriding protections found in the Flores litigation settlement agreement that limit the time minors can be detained. Whether this language overrules the Flores settlement would still be decided in court.

The bills also authorize the DHS Secretary to set minimal detention standards for single adult detention facilities without having to go through normal review, creating a situation where private prison operators whose facilities fail to meet current standards could be granted contracts anyway. The consequences of providing such large sums of money to increase detention without commensurate oversight will exacerbate deleterious and inhumane conditions that have been endemic to the detention system for years, including medical neglect, overcrowding, overuse of solitary confinement, and preventable deaths.

Arrests

The House bill directs $26.7 billion toward ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, including funding to hire an additional 10,000 ICE officers in five years. Similarly, the Senate bill allocates $29.9 billion for these purposes. However, unlike the House bill, which designates funds for specific activities, the Senate bill provides a single lump sum with a list of allowable uses. This means the Senate bill provides federal agencies significantly more flexibility in how ICE uses and allocates these funds toward immigration enforcement.

With this funding, the current administration will be poised to dramatically expand community arrests and expand cooperation with state and local law enforcement agencies. Given the recent dismantling of three primary DHS oversight agencies, this funding would also rapidly expand ICE’s enforcement capacity at a time when the agency failed to provide timely and accurate information on the whereabouts of those it has arrested.

The $3.5 billion fund for states to assist in immigration enforcement could also be used to increase state and local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE’s arrest operations, leading to an increase in immigration enforcement.

Immigration Court

The House bill specifically provides $1.3 billion—a 30 percent annual budget increase—for the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the country’s immigration court system. The Senate bill does not provide specific funding for EOIR. Instead, it includes EOIR funding as an allowable expense in a lump sum of $3.3 billion to the Department of Justice (DOJ) which oversees the agency. The Senate bill also limits the number of immigration judges to 800. Given that EOIR currently has about 700 immigration judges, only a small portion of the lump sum is likely to be allocated to EOIR.

By providing only a small additional sum to the immigration courts while significantly increasing funding for immigration arrests and detention, both bills will likely dramatically increase already high immigration court case backlogs particularly for people held in detention facilities. The Senate bill’s decision to cap the number of immigration judges at 800 would also severely restrict progress on backlog reduction. Immigrants held in detention could be forced to wait months between every hearing while immigrants proceeding in their cases outside of detention would face even longer wait times as judges were reassigned to detained dockets.

Byrd Bath Update: The $3.3 billion sum to the DOJ initially included a provision that prohibited Byrne JAG law enforcement grant funding to “sanctuary cities” as determined by the Attorney General. The Senate Parliamentarian initially ruled that the provision was non-budgetary and violated reconciliation rules likely because the requirement was too broad. However, after Senate Republicans limited the requirement to only Byrne JAG funding provided in the Senate bill, the provision was ultimately included. As a result, any state seeking additional law enforcement funding under this provision could be forced to prove their compliance with DOJ’s interpretation of the law.

Children

The House bill charges families of unaccompanied children up to $8,500 to sponsor a child and subjects them and their household members to intensive surveillance. This is because the House bill applies a $3,500 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children and charges a $5,000 fee to sponsors if the child as a pending immigration court case. The latter fee is refundable if the child completes the court case.

Initially, the Senate bill included the $5,000 refundable fee, but it was eliminated following the Byrd bath.

However, a combination of new mandatory fees in both bills impose onerous and prohibitive fees that will make it enormously challenging for children to make a case for permanent safety such as requiring children. In the House bill, on top of the sponsor fees—which will likely force children to stay in detention due to the inability of sponsors to afford these new fees—children will have to pay $1,000 to apply for asylum or $500 to apply for Special Immigrant Juvenile status. While the application fees are lower in the Senate bill ($100 and $250, respectively), they will still shut out many children from obtaining an immigration status.

In addition, both the Senate and House bills remove existing statutory protections regarding licensing of family residential centers, which places children at risk of prolonged detention in unsafe conditions.

The Senate bill contains a $300 million fund for the Office of Refugee Resettlement to conduct background checks and home studies on any potential sponsor of a child, as well as to conduct physical examinations of the bodies of all children in ORR custody to check for tattoos or other identifying marks.

Byrd Bath Update: The Senate bill initially kept the $5,000 fee for sponsors of children in immigration court proceedings, but the Parliamentarian ruled that it violated reconciliation rules.

Border

Both the House bill and the Senate bill invest $46.6 billion into border wall construction—more than 3 times what the Trump administration spent on the wall in his first term despite the failure of the wall to improve or contribute in any meaningful way to border management strategy. The Senate and House bills also include $5 billion for updating and constructing CBP facilities and checkpoints.

Both chambers also provide new funding for CBP. The House bill provides $8.3 billion for hiring and retention new Border Patrol agents and vehicles and new infrastructure for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, while the Senate bill provides $7.8 billion. Both bills also provide $450 million for Operation Stonegarden, a program funding cooperation with state and local law enforcement at the border.

Both chambers’ Armed Services bills include funding for the Department of Defense to support the military’s border operations—$5 billion in the House and $1 billion in the Senate. This could include deployment of military personnel for immigration enforcement, temporary detention of migrants, and deportations of migrants.

State Grants for Immigration- and Border-Related Enforcement

On May 21, 2025, the House Rules Committee approved a manager’s amendment that added $12 billion for states that have supported border-related immigration enforcement. The Senate bill includes $10 billion for a “State Border Security Reinforcement Fund” for constructing border barriers and intercepting unauthorized border crossings. In addition, the Senate bill includes $3.5 billion for reimbursements to state or local governments for costs related to immigration-related enforcement, detention, and criminal prosecutions.

These funding provisions for states and local governments cover actions taken on or after January 21, 2021. In practice, this means that a significant portion of these federal funds will likely reimburse Texas for its state-run immigration enforcement program known as Operation Lone Star. Texas has spent over $11 billion on the program thus far. While the reconciliation bill will fund this large-scale state immigration enforcement effort, the Trump administration has simultaneously paused grants made to states and localities for programs responding to the urgent humanitarian needs of newly-arrived migrants and has proposed eliminating it completely in the next fiscal year.

Byrd Bath Update: The Parliamentarian ruled that both the $10 billion and $3.5 billion provisions violated reconciliation rules because they authorize state and local officials to arrest any noncitizen suspected of being in the U.S. unlawfully, which is a federal function. However, after including language that clarified that any authority had to conform with existing statute, both were included in the Senate bill.

Border Enforcement Fund

The Senate bill establishes a new $10 billion fund to reimburse DHS for costs related to “safeguard[ing] the borders of the United States to protect against the illegal entry of persons or contraband.” This funding is nearly 50% of CBP’s FY 2024 budget. However, unlike a normal budget, this funding would provide very few guardrails and little guidance to DHS on how the funds must be used. As a result, this would become a slush fund for CBP to largely use however it determined.

Judicial Oversight

The House bill includes a provision to limit judicial oversight of the executive branch by restricting federal judges from holding the executive branch and its agencies in contempt for disobeying court orders if security bonds were not paid prior to obtaining a preliminary injunction. The Senate bill initially included a provision that prohibited federal courts from issuing temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions with narrow exceptions. However, after the Parliamentarian ruled against the Senate provision, it was removed.

Byrd Bath Update: The Parliamentarian ruled that the Senate provision limiting the ability of federal courts to issue preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders violated reconciliation rules because it required litigants to potentially post an enormous bond. It was subsequently removed from the bill.

Both bills include provisions that dramatically increase or create new fees for certain immigration applications and forms of humanitarian protection. Below are five charts with a comparison of current and proposed fees that span USCIS, DOS, CBP, EOIR, and DHHS.

Importantly: all proposed fees are the minimum required but could be increased by the agency or department and may be layered on top of existing fees. And all fees are subject to yearly inflationary adjustments. Alarmingly, the proceeds of these fees largely go to the general fund at the Treasury Department and not for application processing.

There are many fees where fee waivers are prohibited, which are typically used by particularly low-income people who would qualify for the legal relief they are seeking but cannot afford to apply. This overrides or erases other provisions of law, including in the Violence Against Women Act, which require the government to offer fee waivers to certain vulnerable populations.