How Trump’s big budget bill would jump-start his immigration agenda

Washington – Build the border wall. Increasing detention capacity. Hire thousands of immigration agents.

The budgetary bill narrowly approved Tuesday by the Senate includes massive financing perfusions – around $ 150 billion – to immigration and border application. If it is adopted, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will cement President Trump’s hard legacy on immigration.

The budget bill would make immigration and customs application the most funded law enforcement agency of the federal government, exceeding its current annual detention budget of $ 3.4 billion on several occasions. It would also impose costs on immigration services which were once free or less expensive and would facilitate local police to work with the federal immigration authorities.

The 940 -page Senate bill will now return to the House, which adopted its version in May, also by a vote, 215 to 214. The two chambers must now reconcile the two versions of the bill.

Although the legislation is still evolving, the immigration provisions in the versions of the Chamber and the Senate are similar and are not subject to intense debates on other questions, such as Medicaid or Taxes.

Many funds would be available for four years, although some have more or shorter deadlines. The Congressional Budget Office considered that, if it was promulgated, the bill would increase the deficit by at least 3.3 billions of dollars
Over the next 10 years.

Here are key elements concerning immigration:

Border wall

• $ 46.5 billion to strengthen the American border wall and prohibit smugglers from migrants at sea.

This includes the sections of construction barrier and access roads and the installation of technology linked to barriers such as cameras, lights and sensors. Legislation does not refer to specific locations.

Trump, during his first mandate, promised several times that Mexico would pay the wall. This is not the case.

Endowing

• 32 billion dollars for the application of immigration, including ice personnel and expansion of so -called 287 agreements (G), in which state organizations and local law enforcement are associated with federal authorities to expel immigrants.
• 7 billion dollars for hiring border patrol agents, customs of entrance ports, air and sailor agents and field support staff; retention bonuses; and vehicles.
• $ 3.3 billion to hire immigration judges and support staff, among other provisions.

Trump said he wanted to hire 10,000 ice agents, as well as 3,000 border patrol agents.

Detention

• $ 45 billion to build and use immigrant detention facilities and transport those expelled.
• 5 billion dollars for new customs and border protection facilities and improvements in existing facilities and control points. We do not know how it could affect California or the border patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 near San Onofre.

The bill allows the ownership of families indefinitely, pending a return decision.
. Heidi Altman, vice-president of the National Immigration Law Center policy, described this flagrant violation of the so-called Flores settlement agreement, which has been in place since 1977 and limits the duration that children can be held at 20 days.

Local assistance

• 13.5 billion dollars to reimburse states and local governments for immigration costs. These are divided into two financing pots: $ 10 billion for the “State border border security fund” and “deficits linked to the transition to the national transition” or the Biden Fund. The two would finance the arrest by the application of local immigrant laws that have entered the United States illegally and committed a crime.

“You can think about it as a gift for [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott, ”said Altman.

Immigration fees

• Fees of at least $ 100 for those asking for asylum, down compared to costs of $ 1,000 described in the bedroom bill. The candidates would also pay $ 100 each year, the request remains pending. This is unprecedented – fees have never previously been imposed on migrants fleeing persecution.
• At least $ 550 ($ 275 in renewal) to request employment authorization for those who have asylum applications, humanitarian conditional release and temporary protection status. Currently, there is no fees for asylum seekers and costs of $ 470 for others.
• At least $ 500 for temporary protected status, compared to $ 50.

The costs indicated are minimum – the bill allows annual increases and, for many, prohibits derogations according to financial needs.

“The paradox of a fee for an employment authorization document is that you are not allowed to work, but you must pay the costs,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, analyst of the Policy Policy Institute policies.

Altman noted that the imposition of an annual fee for asylum seekers for their pending requests punishes people for the US government’s late system, which is out of the applicant’s control.

Other sections exclude legally present immigrants, such as refugees and those who have obtained asylum, benefits, including Medicare, Medicaid and the additional nutritional aid program. Another provision excludes children from the children’s tax credit if their parent has no social security number.

Praise and contempt

Altman, whose organization has closely followed the aspects of immigration to the financing bill, said that people can examine legislation in two ways: an overview – as a 150 billion dollars infusion to overcome what Trump administration has already started – or surgically, as a series of political changes that will not be easy to undo the most fundamental needs. “”

Bush-Joseph had a different view. She said funding strengthens an obsolete and inflexible immigration system without fundamentally changing it.

“This is why there is all this money on the border, even if there are not many people who come now,” she said.

Money alone will not change things overnight, said Bush-Joseph. It takes time to hire people and open detention facilities. Immigration judges will always have a backlog of massive cases. And bringing foreign countries to accept accepting more deportees is difficult.

“Stop and have people with private entrepreneurs did not make you hear an El Salvador agreement to take five other planes per week,” she said.

During a White House event on Thursday, Trump urged the congress to quickly adopt the bill, saying that it “will be the most important element of border legislation forever crossed the soil of the Congress”.

Senator Rand Paul de Kentucky, one of the three Republicans who voted against the bill on Tuesday, called him “reckless spending”, writing on X: “I am absolutely to hire new people to help guarantee our borders, but we do not need it insofar as this is in this bill, especially when our border is largely contained.”

Through the political aisle, the Democrats, including the Senator of California, Alex Padilla, criticized the bill, claiming that the funding linked to immigration increases to a change in substantial policy.

“One might think that perhaps for a moment, the Republicans would take this process of reconciliation as an opportunity to do what they said before wanting to do and modernize the immigration system of our country,” said Padilla last month. “But this is not the case.”