{"id":8863,"date":"2025-05-05T22:01:44","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T22:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-deportation-promise-hinges-on-gop-delivering-megabill\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T22:01:44","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T22:01:44","slug":"trumps-deportation-promise-hinges-on-gop-delivering-megabill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-deportation-promise-hinges-on-gop-delivering-megabill\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s deportation promise hinges on GOP delivering megabill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s ability to accelerate his lagging deportations agenda hinges on congressional Republicans figuring out what they\u2019re going to cut to pay for it.<\/p>\n

White House border czar Tom Homan has pleaded with GOP lawmakers for more money for months as the White House has struggled to launch the mass deportation campaign the president promised. Top administration officials have been in close touch with Blue Light News about the figures they need to ramp up removals.<\/p>\n

Republicans appear ready to give the White House more than officials have asked for. The House and Senate proposals would allow the committees that oversee immigration to spend between $200 billion and $350 billion \u2014 as Homan has projected the deportation effort would cost $86 billion to execute.<\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans agree with the idea of plowing billions into the president\u2019s No. 1 campaign pledge. But that money is out of reach, as lawmakers struggle to agree on cuts to pay for the huge increase in spending plus the extension of the tax breaks Trump signed into law during his last term.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

A Department of Homeland Security memo last month warned House and Senate Republicans that failure to pass the legislation would \u201cundo all the Trump Administration\u2019s Massive Successes.\u201d And the president\u2019s budget outline released Friday<\/a> further underscored where the White House is pressuring lawmakers to land: Trump called for a 65 percent increase in funding for border security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even as he\u2019s seeking major cuts across the federal government.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s No. 1 for those guys \u2026 what we want is what they want,\u201d said House Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.). \u201cWe all want to get this done \u2026 we\u2019re going full speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The funding would turbocharge ICE with an unprecedented influx of cash, allowing the Trump administration to hire thousands of more agents and expand detention capacity across the country. It would also flow to private contractors as the Trump administration looks to outsource some of the deportation process by helping track down migrants and detaining them in for-profit detention facilities.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s vow to quickly remove millions of undocumented immigrants from the country has faced a number of roadblocks. The administration has run up against a bogged-down immigration court system as well as challenges with detention space and staffing, spreading ICE agents thin as they work to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants this year \u2014 four times as many as last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should understand that until they have that money and can start to spend that money, no one should really think that they can start raising the deportation numbers that much,\u201d said Michael Kagan, director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Immigration Clinic. \u201cThey need that money, and that is the first step for expanding detention space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House GOP proposal recommends tens of billions of dollars for detention facilities and the hiring and retention of immigration enforcement personnel \u2014 paving the way for the kind of historic crackdown immigration hardliners have long pushed for.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to be able to build a wall. You\u2019re going to have detention facilities, deportation, all of that stuff,\u201d said Michael Hough, director of federal relations at NumbersUSA, a group that works to reduce both legal and illegal immigration. \u201cThis would be huge, historic.\u201d<\/p>\n

ICE says it has deported roughly 65,700 immigrants since Trump took office, though the deportation numbers have been questioned by experts. The agency has reported 66,500 arrests since January, claiming that three of four were undocumented immigrants with criminal records.<\/p>\n

So far this year, the Trump administration\u2019s monthly deportation pace has been lower than that of the Biden administration at the same time last year. That\u2019s in part because it\u2019s easier to deport people arrested at the border than those apprehended inside the country, and the number of people crossing the border has continued to plummet since Trump took office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve had tremendous success in securing the border. We just want to make sure they can continue to do that,\u201d said House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).<\/p>\n

But more money won\u2019t resolve all of Trump\u2019s challenges \u2014 and \u201carresting and detaining more people\u201d does not automatically result in more removals, said Deborah Fleischaker, former acting chief of staff for ICE during the Biden administration. Home countries of many migrants \u2014 especially those who committed crimes \u2014 don\u2019t always want to take them back. That\u2019s part of the reason the Trump administration has entered a deal with El Salvador to accept deportees from the U.S. and is now in talks with other countries in addition.<\/p>\n

It also takes time and resources to hire, vet and train more agents, and new detention facilities won\u2019t be up and running overnight. The president\u2019s rhetoric has spurred fear across communities, with many immigrants seeking legal aid and going into hiding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a long ways away from 100,000 beds and a million removals. A million removals, that\u2019s like 30,000 removals a week,\u201d said an ICE official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. During \u201cthe previous three administrations, the removal stats were juiced because of all the people crossing the border. A million removals from the interior requires a million arrests. And now everyone is actively hiding and thwarting us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has set an ambitious July 4 deadline for the passage of the GOP megabill, which they hope to enact via fast-track budget procedures that will allow them to sidestep a Democratic filibuster. A number of committees are still hammering out their plans, including politically complicated cuts to Medicaid, and the House and Senate will need to reach a consensus on their proposals.<\/p>\n

The House Judiciary Committee proposed raising revenue via a host of new fees on those who apply through the legal immigration system, including a first-of-its-kind minimum $1,000 fee for asylum seekers and $3,500 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children.<\/p>\n

Democrats, for their part, have virtually no means to block the bill\u2019s passage, assuming the GOP can stay aligned.<\/p>\n

But unlike Trump\u2019s first term, during which a border wall funding fight prompted the longest-ever government shutdown, Democrats have so far not focused on the immigration and border provisions in their attacks on the bill. Instead they are spotlighting the potential cuts to government programs. During a committee markup, Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee were largely silent about the tens of billions of dollars the committee\u2019s bill allocates for the border wall system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s ability to accelerate his lagging deportations agenda hinges on congressional Republicans figuring out what they\u2019re going to cut to pay for it. White House border czar Tom Homan has pleaded with GOP lawmakers for more money for months as the White House has struggled to launch the mass deportation campaign the president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}