The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025, commits roughly $170 billion to immigration enforcement and border security over four years. Of that total, $45 billion goes to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expand detention capacity, $30 billion funds the hiring of new agents with a stated goal of 10,000 additional officers by the end of 2025, and more than $46 billion pays for border wall construction. The law also caps the number of immigration judges at 800, even as the immigration court backlog stood at nearly 3.8 million cases as of June 2025.

How is enforcement structured now?

ICE held nearly 69,000 people in detention as of early January 2026, according to agency figures. Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller confirmed in May 2025 that the administration set a daily arrest quota of 3,000 undocumented immigrants, though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later said no formal target was in place.

The funding follows a broader pull-in of federal law enforcement to immigration enforcement work. According to personnel data obtained by Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and shared with the Guardian, 23 percent of the FBI's roughly 13,000 agents nationwide now handle immigration enforcement. In the bureau's 25 largest field offices, that share climbs to about 50 percent. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), traditionally focused on ports of entry, has also moved inland. In late October 2025, CBP officials replaced several ICE field office directors as authorities worked to hit the daily arrest target.

Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, framed the shift bluntly: "What we're seeing is essentially a realignment of the entire federal government to support this mass deportation agenda."

What did USCIS change for Afghan nationals?

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which typically processes asylum and naturalization applications, received authorization in September 2025 to hire special agents who can "investigate, arrest, and present for prosecution" individuals for immigration violations. In November 2025, USCIS paused asylum decisions after two National Guard members were killed in Washington, DC. The accused shooter is an Afghan national who had been granted asylum earlier in the year. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said on social media that all immigration requests from Afghan nationals would be "stopped indefinitely pending further review of security and vetting protocols."

USCIS also said it would reexamine green cards issued to individuals from 19 countries it labeled "of concern," including Afghanistan, and weigh "negative, country-specific factors" in vetting.

How has the 287(g) program grown?

ICE has also deputized state and local officers through agreements under Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. As of January 2026, ICE had signed more than 1,300 such agreements covering 40 states, up from just 135 in December 2024, before Trump took office. Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer and policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said: "It's not just ICE conducting immigration enforcement—you also have Customs and Border Protection working in the interior of the United States… They have widened the net of enforcement."

What happened at the Hyundai plant?

Immigration authorities have raided workplaces, farms, university campuses, and private homes. In September 2025, agents detained nearly 500 workers, most of them South Korean nationals, at a Hyundai electric vehicle plant in Savannah, Georgia. The operation drew protests from labor unions and concern from Seoul about the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

What is the legal pushback?

Federal courts have started to draw lines. In February 2026, a federal judge ruled that the administration's policy of deporting immigrants to third countries, places other than their countries of origin, violated federal immigration law and migrants' due process rights. A Senate Democrats' report found the administration spent about $40 million last year sending hundreds of migrants to third countries. The administration has said it will likely appeal the ruling.

Legal scholars have also questioned the use of long-dormant statutes. Gupta said invoking laws such as the 1798 Alien Enemies Act represents "a way for the president to flex his authority, and the White House's authority, over the Constitution and the other branches of government." The Supreme Court has weighed in on some of those cases.

What controversies have surfaced at ICE?

Two fatal shootings by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis in January 2026, those of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, prompted mass protests and rare Republican criticism. Pretti's death marked the third such shooting involving ICE agents in the city within three weeks. Following the killing, Senate Democrats briefly blocked DHS funding, then struck a deal on January 29, 2026, with Republicans and the White House to pass five spending bills funding most of the government, alongside a two-week stopgap for DHS.

Jason Houser, who served as ICE chief of staff under President Joe Biden, said the legal authority exists but raised concerns about execution: "What they're doing—I believe that they have the authority, currently under law, to do. But how they're doing it… shows that they don't care about the implications."

What costs fall on immigrants?

The OBBBA also raises or adds fees for Temporary Protected Status applications, asylum claims, and humanitarian parole. Bush-Joseph warned of long-term consequences: "All of this could really result in the [immigration] system itself growing to a completely different scale." Houser, meanwhile, argued the law reflects an enforcement-only approach. "Nowhere has this administration talked about how they're going to fix the immigration system," Houser said.