According to two people familiar with the talks, Trump administration officials are thinking of taking money away from the Transportation Security Administration to make up for the budget deficit at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the main agency responsible for implementing President Donald Trump’s pledge of mass deportations.
Additionally, the government is considering funding ICE from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
In order to make up for a shortfall in the ICE budget, the Trump administration would not be the first to transfer funds granted by Congress from one agency to another inside a department.
Requests for comment were not immediately answered by White House, ICE, and Department of Homeland Security spokespeople.
Even before Trump took office and increased deportations, when the agency’s daily arrest average was about 282, ICE was facing a $230 million budget deficit. According to a senior DHS official, ICE apprehended over 1,200 people on Sunday. Senior ICE leaders have been instructed that the agency must continue to make between 1,200 and 1,500 arrests every day.
According to a former and current DHS official who spoke to NBC News, under the Biden administration, it typically cost ICE around $10,500 to deport a single individual, including the cost of their arrest, their stay in custody, and their travel back to their country of origin.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, the TSA, CISA, and the Coast Guard, informed Congress between 2014 and 2013 that it intended to transfer a total of $1.8 billion to support ICE components that need additional funding, according to a May 2024 Government Accountability Office report. While some of that came from other ICE divisions, the majority came from other organizations, such as the Coast Guard, TSA, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
If TSA cuts affect travelers and result in lengthier airport waits, there may be blowback. Trump has openly blasted the other organizations that are reportedly being considered as financing sources. CISA has come under fire from Trump for contributing to what the agency considered to be false information about the 2020 presidential election. When Trump took office, he also fired the Coast Guard’s commandant without warning.
There are restrictions on the amount that can be transferred, and Congress must be informed of all transfers. A 2023 Congressional Research Service study, for instance, states that up to 5% of any DHS appropriation may be reallocated within DHS in fiscal year 2023, provided that the recipient’s budget as initially established by Congress does not increase by more than 10%.
Trump pledged during his inaugural speech that his administration will deport millions of people. The Trump administration would have to spend $10.5 billion to deport just one million aliens if the average cost of doing so stays the same as it did under the previous administration.
According to former and current DHS officials, the typical operational budget for all of ICE, which is also in charge of other matters including money laundering, drug trafficking investigations, stopping child exploitation, and customs infractions, is roughly $9 billion.
During the Biden administration, DHS transferred over $400 million from other DHS divisions to ICE in fiscal year 2023. Less than 40,000 people would be deported with that amount of money.
The Trump administration is also depending on other law enforcement organizations, such as the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, to assist ICE agents in making arrests of migrants in order to compensate for ICE’s manpower shortages.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of ICE tasked with looking into drug trafficking, human trafficking, and other international crimes with a U.S. connection, may be under pressure to arrest and deport migrants, according to former acting ICE director P.J. Lechleitner.
According to Lechleitner, HSI will need to reallocate its invested equity and reallocate resources from some of its other primary operations. The game is zero sum.