Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

What $100 Billion in New ICE Funding Would Look Like
Inae Oh
09 Jul 2025
🖨️ Print Article
Militarized ICE agents are a detention facility
Andres Kudacki/Getty

The staggering increase in ICE enforcement is difficult to process. These numbers will help.

Originally published in Mother Jones.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic agenda, which seeks to inject plutocratic ideology and disdain for the poor into nearly every corner of American life, is on the verge of passage. Its success comes despite overwhelming unpopularity and official estimates that it will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt while slashing $930 billion from Medicaid over a decade.

Yet even for all the descriptors that have been attached to Trump’s budget bill—big, mega, supercharged—the scope of one of its most crushing ambitions appears to have been lost on the American public: more than $100 billion in new funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement through 2029.

What does that even look like? The figure would fund the single largest increase in immigration enforcement in US history. It would ramp up mass deportations to an unprecedented scale; create hastily built, sordid detention centers across the country; and all but ensure that millions of people who haven’t been accused of crimes are disappeared.

Here are some ways to process the scale of $100 billion in ICE funding:

343 times what Elon Musk spent to swing the 2024 elections

140 times the cost to make New York City buses free

1,451 times private prison company CoreCivic’s net 2024 income

568 times the cost to pay all US students’ public school lunch debt

1,923 times the amount saved by the bill’s defunding of Planned Parenthood

62.5 times what the US paid in reparations to over 82,000 interned Japanese Americans

2,000 Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez weddings

388 of the HIV vaccine program the Trump administration eliminated, effectively ending chances for a shot to prevent infections

8 times what the US spent to develop and purchase Covid vaccines in 2020

185 years of operating the Guantánamo Bay prison

2.1 times what it would cost to hire enough teachers and nurses to end both national shortages

7.6 Rupert Murdochs

385 Rick Scotts, the richest US senator

170 times the amount Trump’s bill cuts from the national parks

2.63 times what the US Agency for International Development spent in 2023

12 times the 2023 Federal Bureau of Prisons budget

2 times Harvard University’s endowment, the largest of any university in the world

7 times the 2021 federal child care funding

4.4 times what the US has spent on Israel’s military since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks

Inae Oh is the Senior News and Engagement Editor at Mother Jones.

 

Immigration
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
National budget

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
They Wear The Masks
19 August 2026
“We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes …” 
Devin B. Martinez
ICE Killings Fuel Nationwide Protests
22 July 2026
Recent killings at the hands of federal agents have fueled protests across the US, including a nationwide day of action on July 18.
Black Alliance for Peace NYC/NJ Citywide Alliance
Collective Statement Delivered at Delaney Hall Rally - June 12, 2026
15 July 2026
Capitalist predation and imperialism displace people from their homelands. Once in the U.S.
Abayomi Azikiwe
Detroit People’s Tribunal Takes Mask off ICE
08 July 2026
Activists gathered from various areas of Michigan to report on the excesses and brutality of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Obama Center is a Monument to the More Effective Evil
10 June 2026
Barack Obama bailed out the banks, deported millions, and devastated nations and millions of people through wars of aggression.
Community Movement Builders - Newark
CMB Newark Statement on the Delaney Hall Uprising
03 June 2026
The immigrants who revolted inside the Delaney Hall immigration jail are not criminals but prisoners of war, and their actions are those of res
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Making America Whiter Again: White Supremacy in Action
27 May 2026
There is nothing mysterious about Trump’s effort to curb legal immigration. White supremacy is the explanation.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Jamal Abdulahi
Trump is Not Defeated in Minnesota
27 May 2026
Minnesota pushed back against ICE until its visible presence seemed cut in half, but Trump does not forgive or forget, and it’s a tim
Matt Sledge , Sam Biddle
ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Cops Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence
27 May 2026
A newly uncovered police bulletin warns that white supremacists may interpret ICE social media content as a call to violence.
John Perry
Exaggerated Claims by White Nationalists About Latino Migration to US
06 May 2026
The same exaggerated numbers that buoy Trump's border panic also help US-funded NGOs attack socialist governments. 

More Stories


  • Banning of Palestinian NGOs: How Israel Tries to Silence Human Rights Defenders
    Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo
    Banning of Palestinian NGOs: How Israel Tries to Silence Human Rights Defenders
    23 Nov 2021
    The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is celebrated on November 29.
  • Sudanese Protest Military Take Over of Civilian Government
    Peoples Dispatch
    Sudan’s Anti-Coup Protesters Reject Agreement to Reinstate Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok
    23 Nov 2021
    The people of Sudan reject the military's attempt to give legitimacy to the coup waged against the civilian government.
  • Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, in which exceptionalism and selective amnesia are celebrated. The sick fairy tale obscures the violent, white supremacist foundations of this country.
    Mark P. Fancher
    Indigenous Peoples’ Land - Stolen Fair and Square
    23 Nov 2021
    Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday, in which exceptionalism and selective amnesia are celebrated.
  • Nicaragua Explains Why It’s Leaving OAS, Responds to US Attacks on Its Elections
    Ben Norton
    Nicaragua Explains Why It’s Leaving OAS, Responds to US Attacks on Its Elections
    23 Nov 2021
    The Nicaraguan people are fighting to preserve their rights to democracy and self-determination in the face of U.S. aggression.
  • Organizing Against Racism and Class Oppression
    Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley
    Organizing Against Racism and Class Oppression
    17 Nov 2021
    Core organizer for Freedom Fighters DC Afeni joins Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley to discuss her activism and views on the current political situation in the United States.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us