Trump's Immigration Crackdown Is Overwhelming ICE Facilities and Running Up Huge Bills

The cost of Trump's immigration crackdown keeps going up.

On June 13, approximately 50 detainees at Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed immigration facility in Newark, New Jersey, managed to push down the wall of a third-floor dormitory room, allowing four to escape. (Three have since been caught). The mini-riot at the facility, which is owned and operated by The GEO Group under a 15-year, $1 billion contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), started after the detainees were angered by what they say are consistently late and poor-quality meals. 

In a statement shared with Reason, a GEO Group spokesperson emphasized the company's compliance with ICE detention standards, offerings of "dietitian-approved meals" and "religious and specialty diets," and its processing centers' accreditation by "the American Correctional Association and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care."

Delaney Hall is the latest federal immigration detention center to experience dysfunction. In Miami, a lack of legal representation and degrading conditions amid an influx of 400 ICE detainees led to a mini-riot at a federal facility in May, as reported by Reason's C.J. Ciaramella. In Kansas, civil rights groups allege inmates are being subjected to lengthy lockdowns, abuse of force, and medical neglect. At the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington—a facility that currently holds 1,300 detainees—a 50 percent surge in occupancies this year and severe staffing shortages likely contributed to a successful escape in March.

The Trump administration's immigration crackdowns are exacerbating problems at these detention centers. The federal government has allocated enough funding to hold 41,500 people at detention centers across the country, but data show ICE is currently holding over 50,000 people. The agency has already outspent its budget by more than $1 billion, with three months remaining in the fiscal year. The quotas for 3,000 daily arrests all but guarantee that chronic failures like overcrowded cells, cut-rate meals, skeletal medical care, and unrest that leads to escape attempts will only intensify. 

Congress may soon address these problems with significant funding increases. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" being debated in the Senate would inject $168 billion into immigration and border enforcement agencies, including ICE, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), over five years, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. 

Part of this $168 billion includes $5 billion for CBP to construct and expand detention facilities, $45 billion for ICE to spend on detention through FY 2029, $550 million for ICE facility upgrades, and $950 million to reimburse state and local agencies assisting with immigration enforcement. The CBO estimates the bill will add $2.8 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years. 

When factoring in how aggressive deportations reduce tax revenue and economic activity, the bill's immigration provisions are nearly $1 trillion more than the CBO estimates, according to David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

The rising cost of immigration enforcement will continue unless Congress implements suitable legislative measures, he tells Reason. "Congress effectively has given up on policing what the agencies are spending their money on." With Congress neglecting its fiscal duties, the Trump administration is spending "on what they want to spend it on, and really the only check is the internal politics within the administration." 

"Effectively, they have everyone in line on immigration enforcement. So if you want to use the Marines to do immigration, have at it," adds Bier. "There's not really anyone in the administration anymore who's going to say 'no' when ICE comes knocking for their people and their appropriations."

ICE has not shown itself to be responsible in the way it manages its finances or the way it manages detentions. Instead of holding the agency accountable or revising its policies, lawmakers are preparing to allocate more funds to ICE, at the expense of taxpayers. "There's not a question of whether they'll spend it, it's just whether it will be spent efficiently, and I'm sure it will not," says Bier.