U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law a $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies, ending a months-long standoff with Democrats after the deaths of two American citizens. The signing took place in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
The law provides funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for at least the remainder of Trump's term. The money supplements $140 billion that both agencies received from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Congress in July last year.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Trump accused Democrats of seeking to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and CBP. "Democrat senators attempted to block every dollar for the Department of Homeland Security in a disgraceful effort to throw open our borders," Trump said. "They want to drag us back into chaos and crime."
Immigration dominated Trump's reelection campaign. In his second term, he promised a mass deportation drive. Though initially targeting criminals, the strategy quickly expanded to people without criminal records.
According to the Legal Defense Fund, in the first nine months of Trump's second term, ICE street arrests increased elevenfold compared with the last months of President Joe Biden's term. Arrests of people without criminal records rose sevenfold. Human rights groups accuse ICE and CBP of racial profiling, excessive violence and unconstitutional tactics to boost detention numbers, including warrantless home searches and blocking immigrants from exercising due process rights.
Politically, Democratic leaders initially supported the $70 billion bill to boost ICE and CBP staffing. They reversed course after the January deaths of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Democrats pledged to oppose any new funding without safeguards for officer conduct.
The standoff forced DHS to suspend non-essential operations for 76 days, straining personnel, particularly at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Lawmakers later split ICE and CBP funding from other DHS agencies. Funding for other agencies passed in April, but Democrats continued to block the ICE and CBP bill.
The $70 billion bill finally passed after weeks of Republicans using budget reconciliation, which allowed passage in the Senate by a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats and a narrow majority in the House, which passed the bill Tuesday.
Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, denounced the new funding. He called it "a taxpayer-funded bill built on a false premise" that would "destabilize communities, tear families apart, and give ICE license to perform lawless acts as we have seen in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and throughout America."
