In this op-ed for MSNBC, Fordham Law Professor John Pfaff explains that President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” will not solve the problem of recruiting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, though it allocates billions of dollars to do so.
The repercussions of the sprawling bill President Donald Trump signed into law last week will be felt for decades. Of immediate concern to many critics is approximately $170 billion the law gives to the Department of Homeland Security, including almost $30 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents have been at the forefront of Trump’s aggressive mass deportation efforts.
While the original House version of the bill set a specific hiring target for ICE of at least 10,000 new agents, the final version signed into law simply gives ICE tens of billions of dollars for everything from an unspecified number of new officers to transporting deportees to IT upgrades. The White House is still saying it plans to hire 10,000 new officers, however, which would more than double the number of enforcement agents, and the “Big Beautiful Bill” gives him a lot of money to do so. But that may be harder than it looks.
Read “Trump‘s megabill gives billions to ICE — but hiring 10,000 new agents won’t be easy” on MSNBC.