How Much Will Trump’s Mass Deportation Effort Cost Taxpayers?

Introduction

Since President Trump took office, a top priority for his administration and supporters in Congress has been an agenda of mass deportation and detention. 

The primary institutional enablers of this agenda are Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), both housed within the Department of Homeland Security. Other agencies — including the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard (also part of DHS), and others — have also supported this agenda.

This memo provides an estimate for funding allocated by Congress to this effort as of late July 2026. Allocations under the second Trump administration include funds provided from 2025 through 2029. If Congress approves more funding through regular appropriations or other avenues, the total will grow.

Major sources of funding for Trump’s mass deportation and detention agenda enacted through July 2026 are as follows, and are detailed below: 

• H.R. 1 / Public Law 119-21, Reconciliation 2025 (“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”)
• Public Law 119-98 / Reconciliation 2026 (“Secure America Act”)
• FY 2025 and FY 2026 appropriations 
• Repurposed funds under the Department of Defense: National Guard and other deployments, deportation flights, detention operations

Under the Trump administration, Congress and federal agencies have already committed a total of $268.9 billion in federal funds for immigration enforcement from FY 2025 through FY 2029. 

Table 1. Enacted Immigration Funds as of July 2026, FY 2025 – FY 2029

Source	Total Enacted, FY 2025 – FY 2029
H.R. 1	$175,579,330,000
Secure America Act	$52,545,000,000
DHS – ICE & CBP FY 2025	$33,513,194,000
DoD – Other	$3,632,400,000
DHS – Coast Guard	$2,000,000,000
Dept. of Defense – National Guard	$1,293,542,016
DoJ – Law enforcement grants	$436,500,000
Grand Total	$268,999,966,016

Sources: PL 119-21 (OBBBA); PL 119-98 (Secure America Act). ICE & CBP FY 2025 from DHS Budget Justification FY 2026. Coast Guard from GAO. National Guard from CBO and authors’ calculations. DoD other costs from Warren et. Al, “Draining Defense.” DoJ costs from PL 119-74; PL 119-4; PL 118-122.

These figures are conservative. They do not include the full contribution to immigration enforcement from various federal agencies — including the Coast Guard, FBI, DEA, FEMA, and others — or the costs to state and local governments beyond limited federal reimbursement. Estimated costs are likely to grow if or when Congress allocates additional funds.

An estimate of these expenses broken down by fiscal year is included below.

H.R. 1 / OBBBA

Passed in July 2025, H.R. 1 — or the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — was designed to give the Trump administration the majority of the funds needed to enact the mass deportation and detention agenda during Trump’s term. The package was passed under congressional rules of reconciliation, meaning the legislation required only a simple majority to pass. 

The bill provided more than $175.6 billion in mass deportation and detention funding, to be spent by September 2029, so that funds would be available for the entirety of Trump’s presidential term.¹ Of that total, $133 billion was designated for ICE and CBP, including $45 billion for detention and $46.5 billion for a border wall. H.R. 1 also includes funds for reimbursement of state and local law enforcement for immigration enforcement, prosecution of immigration cases, and $1 billion for the Department of Defense to support immigration enforcement. Immigration enforcement spending in H.R. 1 is shown in the Table 1 below. 

This may underestimate immigration enforcement spending in H.R. 1, since it assumes only 20 percent, or $4.9 billion, of Coast Guard spending in H.R. 1 pertains to immigration enforcement, even though more than $13 billion is allocated for the purchase and use of types of aircraft commonly used for border security and interdiction of migrants. 

Table 2. Immigration Enforcement Spending in H.R. 1

DHS	FY 2025- FY 2029
ICE	$74,850,000,000
CBP	$64,725,630,000
Coast Guard	$4,918,700,000
Other DHS	$23,255,000,000
DHS Sub-total	$167,749,330,000
DoJ	$6,830,000,000
DoD	$1,000,000,000
Grand total	$175,579,330,000

Sources: PL 119-21; Cato Institute (assumes 20% of Coast Guard funds are related to immigration enforcement).² Totals may not add due to rounding.

In addition to funds for mass deportation and detention, the legislation substantially increased fees for legal immigration, demonstrating that the purpose of the legislation was not just enforcement of existing laws, but to discourage immigration overall.³

Department of Homeland Security

DHS includes ICE and CBP, the Coast Guard, and FEMA — all agencies that are contributing to the administration’s mass detention and deportation agenda. 

ICE and CBP 

ICE and CBP are the core of immigration enforcement and the administration’s mass deportation agenda. In addition to the massive funding passed under H.R. 1, ICE had a budget of $10.4 billion in FY 2025.⁴ CBP had an annual budget of $23 billion in FY 2025.⁵ Regular funding (non-H.R. 1) for ICE and CBP in FY 2025 totaled $33.5 billion.

Additional ICE and CBP funding was passed by reconciliation under the Secure America Act in 2026.⁶ That bill provided $31 billion in immigration-related funding for ICE, $16.5 billion in immigration-related funding for CBP, and $5 billion in additional immigration-related funding under DHS. Funding under the Secure America Act is to remain available through September 2029.

The Secure America Act included an additional $17 billion for ICE and CBP that are specified for “functions other than immigration enforcement.” Those funds are not included in this estimate.

Future appropriations to ICE and CBP could increase this estimate.

Table 3. ICE and CBP from FY 2025 and Secure America Act

	FY 2025 appropriation
ICE	$10,421,672,000
CBP	$23,091,522,000
Sub-total	$33,513,194,000
	Secure America Act (immigration-related)
ICE	$31,075,000,000
CBP	$16,470,000,000
Other DHS	$5,000,000,000
Sub-total	$52,545,000,000
Total, DHS	$86,058,194,000

Sources: PL 119-98 (Secure America Act). ICE & CBP FY 2025 from DHS Budget Justification FY 2026

Coast Guard

The Coast Guard plays a major role in maritime border enforcement, including intercepting migrants and increasingly in carrying out deportations.⁷ 

In FY 2024, approximately $1 billion of the Coast Guard’s $10 billion operating budget was related to its “migrant interdiction” mission.⁸ The Coast Guard budget for FY 2025 was also about $10 billion.⁹ The Coast Guard budget for FY 2026 was $13.5 billion.¹⁰ We conservatively assume that again, $1 billion of the Guard’s regular appropriation for each of those years was related to migrant interdiction. 

Over two fiscal years, the Coast Guard operated at least 886 migrant transfer flights using C-130 and C-27 aircraft.¹¹ Due to uncertainty about the timing of these flights and whether they may be partially or completely included in the “migrant interdiction” mission budget, no additional costs are assigned to this activity.

Future appropriations to the Coast Guard could increase this estimate.

Table 4. Coast Guard Contributions, FY 2025 and FY 2026

	FY 2025 and FY 2026
Coast Guard	$2,000,000,000.00

Source: GAO.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

In August 2025, DHS announced that it would be reassigning “dozens” of FEMA employees to ICE to help with deportations, according to a report in The Washington Post.¹² Early that month, DHS had already transferred more than 100 people to ICE, including “half of FEMA’s human resources department and about 50 people from its security team.”  People received emails directing them to report to work at the ICE Los Angeles office — and if they refused, they might be fired.  

FEMA had already lost 2,000 staff that year, and several insiders voiced concern about the impact on FEMA operations of the ongoing transfers to ICE. Former FEMA admin Deanne Criswell told the Post, “For most large disasters, FEMA brings on local hires to augment the response. They need to be processed by human capital and vetted by security.”¹³ 

Absent additional information about the number of staff reassigned, their salaries, or the duration of reassignment, these costs are not included here.

Department of Defense

In addition to the DoD funds authorized in H.R. 1, the Trump administration has deployed military personnel and resources to support its mass deportation agenda using other DoD funds. 

Few if any of the DoD funds used in support of mass deportation and detention have been explicitly appropriated by Congress for this purpose, but the sheer size of the Pentagon budget — and the latitude afforded by vague legislative language and transfer authority — means the Pentagon has been able to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, to this effort. 

These estimates are likely conservative because the full extent of DoD’s support for immigration enforcement isn’t known.

Costs include:

• Deployment of the National Guard and Marines to U.S. cities.

• Deployment of troops to the Southern border.
• Use of military flights for deportations and transport.
• Use of military installations for detention.

National Guard Deployments

In January 2026, at the request of ranking Democratic member Jeff Merkley of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, the CBO sent Merkley a memo estimating the cost of military deployments related to immigration enforcement, covering the second half of 2025. This does not look at all at ICE or any other federal agency — only at the National Guard and regular military.

Since June 2025, National Guard and/or Marines have been deployed to six cities (Los Angeles, D.C., Memphis, Portland, Chicago, and New Orleans). The CBO cost estimates don’t include New Orleans because it happened too late in the year. It does include 200 National Guard troops who were kept mobilized in Texas after being withdrawn from Chicago. The total cost of those Texas troops’ mobilization plus the troops sent to the other five cities, over the period June-December 2025, is estimated at $496 million.¹⁴

CBO’s methodology is based on calculating costs for four categories of expenses: 1) pay and benefits, including health care, when Guard members are mobilized; 2) lodging; 3) food; and 4) transportation to and within their deployment area. National Guard members receive pay at the same rates as active-duty troops only when they are deployed. On the other hand, the Marines deployed in Los Angeles don’t receive any extra compensation, so the cost of Marine deployments reflects only the additional costs for lodging, food, and travel. In the six cities where troops were deployed in 2025, annual costs per troop ranged from $113,000 for Marines deployed in Los Angeles to $221,000 for National Guard troops deployed in Washington, D.C.

CBO projected ongoing monthly costs for cities with active deployments, but those costs were based on a consistent deployment size. Some deployment sizes, statuses, and end dates have since changed. 

We use the most recent reporting on deployment sizes and dates, and pro-rated CBO monthly cost estimates to estimate the additional likely costs of ongoing deployments in New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Memphis. Those costs totaled $1.3 million for 2025 (for the New Orleans deployment, which began in late December and was not included in the CBO estimate), and $684 million for 2026. 

The administration has announced plans to keep the National Guard in Washington, D.C. through 2029. Costs included here go through 2026 only, since additional funds have yet to be appropriated. Costs will increase if deployments are expanded in size, length, or location. 

Table 4. Cost of National Guard and Marine Domestic Deployments

Year	City	Amount
2025	Five cities	$496,000,000
2025	New Orleans	$1,377,049
2025 Sub-total		$497,377,049
2026	New Orleans	$23,943,794
2026	Washington DC	$578,516,255
2026	Memphis	$193,704,918
2026 Sub-total		$796,164,966
Grand total		$1,293,542,016

Sources: CBO, Author’s calculations.

New Orleans

On December 24, 2025, news sources reported the deployment of 350 National Guard troops deployed to New Orleans.¹⁵ In early March 2026, it was announced that 120 troops would remain through August.¹⁶ We estimate the cost of the New Orleans deployment using the CBO-estimated monthly rate for a deployment of 350 troops ($6 million), pro-rated for the size and length of the deployment. Under those assumptions, the total cost of the New Orleans deployment is $25 million.

Washington, D.C.

Originally deployed in August 2025, National Guard troops are now scheduled to stay in the city through the end of 2029. News reports indicate a decrease in numbers from a peak of 2,950 soldiers (according to CBO) to 2,600.¹⁷ Pro-rating CBO’s monthly cost of $55 million, a deployment of 2,600 through the end of 2026 would cost an additional $578 million. Costs of deployment in future years are not included since those funds have yet to be appropriated.

Memphis

According to the CBO analysis, at its peak in December 2025 there were 1,500 troops deployed in Memphis. As of July 2026, some National Guard members remain in Memphis as part of a “Memphis Safe Task Force” and have been involved in a fatal shooting.¹⁸ Given the lack of an announced end date, we assume a deployment that runs through the end of July 2026 at the previously reported level of 1,500 troops and the CBO-reported monthly cost of $28 million per month, for an additional cost of $193 million. 

DoD Flights, Detention, and other Deployments

The Department of Defense (DoD) has not reported its costs related to immigration enforcement. But in December 2025, a report released by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Representative John Garamendi, and other legislators attempted to tally the cost of immigration operations to the Department of Defense.¹⁹ They note that “the vast majority of these funds have not been reimbursed by the Department of Homeland Security to date.”²⁰

The report noted that as of July 2025, there were 8,500 troops deployed at the southern border and found that the total costs in 2025 of DoD border operations was $1.3 billion. Military detention operations, including at Guantanamo Bay, were estimated to cost $420 million in 2025, while military flights related to immigration enforcement were estimated to cost more than $40 million. Excluding the National Guard and interior troop deployments, which are included in the CBO estimates above, the report identified $1.8 billion in immigration enforcement costs borne by the Pentagon in 2025.

Table 5. DoD Support for Immigration Enforcement in 2025 (excluding interior deployments)

DoD Support for Immigration Enforcement	FY 2025
Deployments to the Border	$1.3 billion
Border Security	$1.1 billion
National Defense Areas	$13.1 million
Permanent Border Barrier	$187.2 million
Deployments to the U.S. Interior	$55 million
JAGs authorized for reassignment as immigration judges	$55 million
Detention Operations	$420.9 million
Guantanamo	$55 million
Domestic Military Installations	$365.6 million
Djibouti	$0.3 million
Flights on Military Aircraft	$40.3 million
Detainee Transport Flights to Guantanamo	$5.6 million
Deportation Flights	$33.1 million
DoD-contracted flights ” to support migrant operations”	$1.6 million
Grand Total	$1.8 billion

Source: Warren et al.

For FY 2026, the Pentagon requested $5 billion to help with border security.²¹ There is no clearly marked appropriation for this purpose in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 that ultimately funded the Defense Department for 2026.²² The Defense Department has adequate funds and latitude to spend $5 billion on border security within the existing legislation, but it has also, at this writing, recently undertaken a major war in Iran and its priorities may lie elsewhere. Given these uncertainties, we conservatively assume that DoD spending on immigration enforcement in FY 2026 will equal spending in FY 2025, $1.8 billion.

DoD Civilians

An email sent in August 2025 to civilian employees at the Pentagon read “The Secretary of Defense has authorized DoD civilian employees to participate in details to the Department of Homeland Security to contribute to its operations along the Southern Border and its internal immigration enforcement activities.”²³

Absent further information about the number of employees reassigned, their salaries, or the length of reassignment, these costs are not included here.

Department of Justice

Department of Justice (DoJ) appropriations include reimbursement for state and local law enforcement agencies incarcerating immigrants.²⁴ In FY 2025 and FY 2026, regular appropriations for these reimbursements totaled $436.5 million.

DoJ also drew from other budgets for immigration purposes. In May 2025, news outlets reported that DoJ was reassigning agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the U.S. Marshals Service to assist with immigration enforcement, with FBI agents expected to make up about 45 percent of the reassigned agents.²⁵ In October 2025, it was reported that 23 percent of the FBI’s roughly 13,000 agents had been reassigned to immigration duties.²⁶

In the absence of additional information about the number of reassignments, salaries, and duration of reassignment, we don’t include an estimate for these costs.

Other Agencies

Reports of other agencies lending staff, resources, or coordination efforts to immigration enforcement are numerous and include:

• The Government Services Administration has created a “surge team” of staff devoted to helping ICE identify and secure locations to serve as detention facilities.²⁷

• There are reports of ICE waiting outside of appointments or coordinating with staff at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to detain people at or after green card interviews or other appointments.²⁸
• A non-exhaustive list of federal programs and agencies that may share data or information with ICE includes the Social Security Administration,²⁹ Internal Revenue Service,³⁰ Housing and Urban Development,³¹ and Medicaid.³² The financial resources associated with this information-sharing are difficult to quantify, but it’s likely that even if minimal, some staff capacity is being redirected to assist immigration enforcement.

None of these costs are included in these estimates. Some of these reassignments and agreements are under court challenge, and others may not have taken effect. While information isn’t adequate to assess any associated costs, any that are operational would result in at least some minimal addition to the bill for immigration enforcement.

1. An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14. (H.R. 1). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text. ↩︎
2. David J. Bier, Deportations to Add Almost $1 Trillion in Costs to the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, Cato Institute, June 6, 2025. https://www.cato.org/blog/deportations-add-almost-1-trillion-costs-gops-big-beautiful-bill. ↩︎
3. Lindsay Koshgarian, Congress Doubled ICE & CBP Budgets and Cut Legal Immigration, Nationalpriorities.org, February 7, 2026. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2026/02/07/congress-doubled-ice-cbp-budgets-and-cut-legal-immigration/. ↩︎
4.  Department of Homeland Security, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview,” Fiscal Year 2026.
   https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-06/25_0613_ice_fy26-congressional-budget-justificatin.pdf. ↩︎
5. Department of Homeland Security, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection Budget Overview,” FY 2026. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-06/25_0613_cbp_fy26-congressional-budget-justificatin.pdf. ↩︎
6.  Public Law 119-98. https://www.congress.gov/119/plaws/publ98/PLAW-119publ98.pdf. ↩︎
7. Patricia Kime, “Coast Guard Receives Unprecedented $25 Billion Infusion Under Sweeping ‘Big Beautiful Bill’,” Military.com, July 9, 2025. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/07/09/coast-guard-receives-unprecedented-25-billion-infusion-under-sweeping-big-beautiful-bill.html. ↩︎
8. Government Accountability Office, “COAST GUARD: Actions Needed to Improve Maritime Interdictions,” January 2026, GAO-26-207440. https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-26-107440/index.html?_gl=1*meuwn3*_ga*MTIxNjQ3MDkyMS4xNzczNTA4MDc1*_ga_V393SNS3SR*czE3NzM3MjE0NDEkbzQkZzAkdDE3NzM3MjE0NDEkajYwJGwwJGgw. ↩︎
9. Public Law 119-4. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1968/text. ↩︎
10.  Public Law 119-86. https://www.congress.gov/119/plaws/publ86/PLAW-119publ86.pdf. ↩︎
11.  Darius Radzius, “Coast Guard Pushes Back As Flight Data Sparks Scrutiny,” Military.com, February 26, 2026. https://www.military.com/daily-news/headlines/2026/02/26/coast-guard-pushes-back-flight-data-sparks-scrutiny.html. ↩︎
12. Brianna Sacks, “Dozens of FEMA staffers involuntarily reassigned to support deportations,” Washington Post, August 6, 2025.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/08/06/fema-ice-mass-deportations-dhs. ↩︎
13. Ibid. ↩︎
14.  Philip L. Swagel, Re: Estimating the Costs of Troop Deployments to U.S. Cities, memorandum provided to U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, Congressional Budget Office, January 28, 2026.  https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2026-01/61943-Troop-Deployments.pdf.  ↩︎
15.  Ashleigh Fields, “Pentagon deploys 350 troops to New Orleans through Mardi Gras,” The Hill, December 24, 2026. ↩︎
16.  Jack Brook, “National Guard deployment in New Orleans extended for six months,” AP, March 2, 2026. ↩︎
17.  Patrick Slayton, “National Guard mission in DC extended through end of 2026,” Task & Purpose, January 18, 2026. ↩︎
18.  Mandy Hrach, “Two deadly Memphis Safe Task Force shootings in four days renew debate over operation, National Guard deployment,” Fox 13, July 9, 2026. ↩︎
19.  U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, et al, Draining Defense: Trump’s Immigration Stunts Cost Billions at the Expense of Military Readiness, Morale, and National Security, Office of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, December 2025. https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/cost_report_on_diverting_military_resources_for_immigration_enforcement.pdf.  ↩︎
20. Ibid. ↩︎
21.  Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Comptroller/ Chief Financial Officer, United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request, July 2025. https://comptroller.war.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2026/FY2026_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf.  ↩︎
22.  Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (H.R. 7148). https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7148/text.  ↩︎
23.  The Guardian, “Pentagon asks civilian employees to join ‘volunteer’ force’ to aid Ice deportations,” Joseph Gedeon and Kira Lerner, August 21, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/21/trump-hegseth-pentagon-ice.  ↩︎
24.  Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (H.R. 1968), 
    https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1968/text. And Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (H.R. 4366). https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4366/text. ↩︎
25.  Priscilla Alvarez et al., “Trump administration plans to deploy hundreds more federal agents to ramp up immigration enforcement across the country,” CNN, May 13, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/13/politics/trump-administration-federal-agents-immigration-enforcement. ↩︎
26.  Sam Levin, “Nearly half of FBI agents in major offices reassigned to immigration enforcement,” The Guardian, October 9, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/09/fbi-agents-reassigned-ice-immigration. ↩︎
27.  Sean Michael Newhouse, “GSA head questioned about agency’s involvement in acquiring space for detaining migrants,” Government Executive, March 5, 2026. https://www.govexec.com/management/2026/03/gsa-head-questioned-about-agencys-involvement-acquiring-space-detaining-migrants/411920.  ↩︎
28.  Billal Rahman, “ICE Arrests at Green Card Interviews Could Be Back,” Newsweek, February 2, 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/ice-arrests-green-card-interviews-could-be-back-11452456. ↩︎
29.  Zoe Schiffer, Vittoria Elliot, Leah Feiger, “Social Security Workers Are Being Told to Hand Over Appointment Details to ICE,” Wired, February 13, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/social-security-administration-appointment-details-ice/. ↩︎
30.  Matt Bracken, “Federal judge blocks ICE from using IRS taxpayer data in enforcement,” FedScoop, February 6, 2026. https://fedscoop.com/judge-blocks-irs-ice-data-sharing-agreement/. ↩︎
31.  Jennifer Ludden and Leila Fadel, “HUD will share data with Homeland Security to target immigrants without legal status,” NPR, March 26, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/nx-s1-5339689/hud-will-share-data-with-homeland-security-to-target-immigrants-without-legal-status.  ↩︎
32.  Alex Olgin, “Medicaid can share data with ICE. Here’s how that 180-degree change spreads fear,” NPR, March 13, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/03/13/nx-s1-5737468/medicaid-immigration-ice-dhs-trump. ↩︎