Immigration and Customs Enforcement may soon be too broke to carry out President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation agenda.
The agency is already $1 billion over budget with more than three months left in the fiscal year, according to Axios, and could run out of money as soon as July. That financial cliff comes as Trump is demanding agents to carry out what he calls “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” The president has ordered ICE to ramp up arrests and specifically target Democratic-led cities like Chicago and New York.
And Trump isn’t hiding how political this is. In a rambling, conspiracy-laden Truth Social post on Sunday, he doubled down on his demands, while stoking false claims about immigrants and elections.
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What Trump isn’t saying, of course, is that this funding crisis is entirely self-inflicted. ICE’s financial meltdown is the direct result of Trump’s demand that agents arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day—a dramatic increase from the roughly 660 per day during his first 100 days in office. That surge in enforcement has come with a massive price tag, and some lawmakers are accusing DHS and ICE of wasting money.
“Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told Axios.
With cash running out, Trump and his allies have a backup plan: to pressure Congress to pass what he’s calling the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a massive piece of legislation that would, among other things, send ICE an extra $75 billion over the next five years. The legislation is far from reaching the finish line; It is currently being negotiated in the Senate, where even some Republicans have raised objections, particularly over Medicaid cuts buried in the text.
Of course, if Congress balks, Trump could sidestep them altogether. Axios reports that Trump could declare a national emergency to redirect money to ICE from elsewhere in the government, just as he did in 2020, when he funneled nearly $4 billion in Pentagon funds to build sections of his border wall.
“I have a feeling they’re going to grant themselves an exception apportionment, use the life and safety exception, and just keep burning money,” a former federal budget official told NPR.
Trump’s team has been stretching its budget authority in other ways, too. His Office of Management and Budget has stopped publicly reporting where federal money is flowing, while other agencies have held back congressionally approved funding for unrelated programs. Even with ICE in crisis, Trump is still finding new ways to funnel resources into immigration enforcement—starving other parts of the government—without the money to pay for the surge in arrests he demanded.
Lawmakers on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees DHS say time is running out. Assuming the agency runs out of money by July, ICE could violate the Antideficiency Act—an obscure but serious law that prohibits federal agencies from spending money they haven’t been allocated through Congress. Violations can, in theory, trigger criminal charges or fines for agency officials, though no one’s ever been prosecuted under the statute.
“They are spending likely in the neighborhood of a billion dollars more at ICE than we authorized, and that’s patently illegal. They cannot invent money,” Murphy told Axios. “They cannot print money. They don’t have the money to spend that they’re spending.”
When asked by Axios whether DHS might run afoul of the law, Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said, “I hope we’ll get them some money by then.”
In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin tried to shift the focus, saying the department is working to “[root] out waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“Under Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s leadership, DHS is rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, and is reprioritizing appropriated dollars,” McLaughlin told Axios and other outlets. “President Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is critical to ensure we have the funding to secure our homeland for generations and deliver on the American people’s mandate [sic] for safety and security.”
But unless that bill passes—or Trump raids other departments for cash—ICE’s mission could grind to a halt. And if that happens, it won’t be because of Congress, or Democrats, or immigrants. It’ll be because of Trump.