Anti-immigration spending soars as 200 Marines have been sent to support ICE in Florida. The new troops will provide “strictly non-law enforcement duties within [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] facilities,” according to a July 3 U.S. Northern Command press release cited by Reuters, which said the Marines would provide administrative and logistical support and are “the first wave of U.S. Northern Command’s support to the immigration enforcement agency’s mission.” More, here.
That follows last month’s deployment of 700 Marines to protect immigration agents during raids in Los Angeles, and the further authorization to send up to 700 Defense Department personnel to support ICE in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
It also follows Thursday’s signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill, the gargantuan spending-and-policy act that will put a staggering $120 billion-plus toward immigration enforcement through 2029. For context, ICE’s 2024 budget was about $8 billion, and border crossings have recently fallen to their lowest level in decades. That 12-figure number breaks down like this, per Axios:
- $46.5 billion to extend the border wall and add security gear.
- $45 billion to build and operate detention centers. (That could bring total immigration-related detention beds to 112,000, according to a July 1 report by the American Immigration Council.)
- $29.9 billion for ICE personnel, vehicles, IT, and other equipment.
- $5 billion to build and improve Customs and Border Protection checkpoints.
- $4.1 billion to hire CBP and other personnel.
- $3.3 billion to hire immigration judges and otherwise increase the capacity of the immigration system.
See what U.S. homeland-security spending priorities look like now, in this chart by Tom Malinowski, a former Democratic congressman.
The passage of the OBBB also cements “a $157 billion defense funding boost that the Pentagon has been counting on to compensate for an otherwise flat budget,” as Military.com put it. “The Pentagon has been banking on passage of the bill to bring its budget next year to a record nearly $1 trillion. Without passage of the bill, the department has been planning a roughly $848 billion budget for fiscal 2026, essentially the same amount of funding it has this year.”
Rewind: some GOP lawmakers had slammed this one-time injection of funds as a “gimmick.” But not Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., who chair the Senate and House armed-services committees, and who defended the bill in an oped in Defense One, here.
For more details on the military and national defense aspects of the OBBB, see the Congressional Research Service’s July 1 report on it, here.
Other news:
- The Coast Guard is giving its districts names to replace the traditional numbers, about 45 years after the Navy did something similar, Chris Cavas reports.
- The Pentagon has reversed its policy that blocked rape kit exams for its civilian workers in foreign countries, Stars and Stripes reported Thursday.
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