House Budget Gives ICE Billions to Recruit More Agents for the Border Battle

President Trump has been on a roll in his efforts to combat illegal immigration and remove undocumented immigrants from the country. His success in the border battle has put the President on the verge of getting billions of dollars from Congress to recruit and retain agents to carry out the mass deportation campaign that was one of the central promises of his campaign.

Trump’s immigration crackdown has been mega-successful. Illegal border crossings have dropped substantially, even without the completion of the border wall and other implementation of other border security measures.

At the heart of this success is the President fulfilling his promise to deport millions of undocumented people. However, despite a valiant effort by ICE, the mass deportations have been moving more slowly than he would like. Administration officials say they can kick it into overdrive if Congress delivers on a measure in Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” which would spend billions of dollars to boost the ranks of border agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The House-passed version includes $8 billion to hire an additional 10,000 ICE employees over five years, boosting the agency’s ranks by nearly 50%, and $858 million more for signing and retention bonuses. At full employment of 30,000 people, the money would cover about $28,600 per employee. Customs and Border Protection would get $2 billion to spread around for such bonuses to its larger workforce, which currently can range as high as $30,000 for new recruits.

White House officials say the money, part of a bigger injection that includes appropriations for detention facilities and other needs for scaling up deportation efforts, is necessary to execute Trump’s vision.

“Any alien who illegally enters the United States has committed a crime and is eligible for deportation,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. “President Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in history and a secure the border — the CATO Institute may disagree with that policy, but the American people don’t.”

“We got over 600,000 illegal aliens with criminal histories walking the streets of this country. We got less than 5,000 deportation officers,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, said Thursday at the White House.

“More agents means more bad guys arrested, taken off the streets of this country every single day,” he added. “Every day, we arrest a public safety threat or national security threat that makes this country much safer. Who the hell would be against that?”

“While the President has already been extraordinarily successful on both fronts, the One Big Beautiful Bill is critical to fortify his success and make the progress permanent by finishing the border wall, detaining and deporting at least one million illegal aliens every year, massively expanding our detention capacity, and hiring additional Border Patrol and ICE agents,” Jackson also said.