ICE Budget Will Be Larger than Marine Corp Budget under Republican /Trump Rule

The Budget for ICE deportations next year will be larger than the budget for the U.S. Marines.

This is how a private, unregulated private army is created by Fascists/ for fascists.

Vote Yes on Proposition 50.  Protect democracy. 

 Key budget details for FY 2026:

• ICE: Multiple reports from July and August 2025 project ICE's total budget to be between $27.7 billion and $30 billion or more, which includes a base budget plus significant supplemental funding. This large increase is due to a budget bill passed in mid-2025 that allocated $75 billion for ICE over four years.
• Marine Corps: The Marine Corps requested $57.2 billion for FY 2026. 

The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal ...

Jul 6, 2025 — The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal 2026 that calls for spending $57.2 billion on new airc...

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Big Budget Act Creates a “Deportation-Industrial Complex”

Aug 13, 2025 — The biggest piece of the pie for enforcement operations in the United States will go to Immigration and Customs Enforc...

 

 

As of October 2025, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) budget is projected to be larger than the Marine Corps budget for fiscal year (FY) 2026

. Recent budget bills have dramatically increased ICE's funding, surpassing the Marines' total budget request. 

 

This is the budget that will take food and health care from Millions of low income Americans. 

 

FY 2026 budget estimates

• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): Several sources indicate that ICE's FY 2026 budget is approximately $29.9 billion, based on a budget bill passed in July 2025 that allocated $75 billion over four years. This is a significant increase from previous years and includes:
• $29.9 billion for enforcement and removal operations.
• $45 billion over four years for expanding detention capacity to over 100,000 individuals.
• Marine Corps: The Marine Corps' FY 2026 budget request is for $57.2 billion, which is a component of the larger Department of the Navy budget. This request includes funding for aircraft, drones, weapons, and facility modernization. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brennan Center for Justice

Context for comparison

While the Marine Corps' budget request appears higher, comparing the final budgets can be complex due to the specifics of the supplemental funding allocated to ICE:

• ICE funding structure: The $75 billion allocated to ICE is a multi-year appropriation, available through September 2029. Sources report that the average annual allocation is about $18.7 billion, but the Trump administration could front-load the spending, increasing the amount available for FY 2026.
• Defining the budget: The Marine Corps' $57.2 billion is a specific request for a single fiscal year. For ICE, the total spending is determined by its base budget plus the supplemental funds it actually spends in FY 2026, which could potentially surpass the Marine Corps' figure depending on how quickly the agency spends the new money. 

Therefore, while the initial request for the Marine Corps is higher, ICE's ability to draw on its new multi-year funding could result in a larger budget for FY 2026. 

AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses 

What are the implications of ICE's budget exceeding that of other federal law enforcement agencies?

How does this compare to previous years' budgets?

What specific programs will the extra ICE funding be used for in 2026?

6 sites

• Big Budget Act Creates a “Deportation-Industrial Complex”

Aug 13, 2025 — The biggest piece of the pie for enforcement operations in the United States will go to Immigration and Customs Enforc...

Brennan Center for Justice

• The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal ...

Jul 6, 2025 — The Marine Corps recently unveiled its budget request for fiscal 2026 that calls for spending $57.2 billion on new airc...

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• ICE’s Budget Is Set to Triple Next Year - Jacobin

Jul 28, 2025 — I also think it could end up being too low, possibly by a lot. There are likely billions more for ICE in the reconcili...

Jacobin

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ICE-Secret Police Is Growing

ICE, budget

LeftLinks Weekly, July 11, 2025

The main features of our political landscape regarding policing are about to change dramatically in the coming year.

We are all familiar with our local and state police and sheriff's departments. While not as familiar, we are also aware of the FBI and U.S. Marshals.

But following the Oct. 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers, we have a new player on the field: ICE and its parent, the Dept of Homeland Security.

Its gathered components reached back over time to include a number of smaller agencies, all collectively termed 'La Migra' by the undocumented workers who felt their weight. Under Homeland Security, they became more concentrated. In its first few years, ICE was known for rounding up Mexican and Chicano street gangs connected to gangs in the prisons, about 90% of their work. Only 10 percent was aimed at immigrant workers. Today, the situation is exactly reversed: 90% of ICE raids focus on normal immigrant labor, while only 10% go after more hardened street and prison-connected gangs.

This, of course, is the opposition of the claim Trump has used to sell ICE to the public.

How will ICE expand its scope today? Some point to the large totals of deportations under Obama, earning him the title 'Deporter-in-Chief.' But this label and associated claims never matched the hype around them. How deportations were counted changed after the Bush administration: before, people caught crossing the southern border were simply bused back and were not counted as deportations. However, under Obama, these people were fingerprinted and added to the deportation tally, thus giving Obama his record numbers of deportations.

Today, the Trump-Miller team is demanding that ICE seize and deport at least 3000 people a day anywhere in the country to reach the millions in deportations promised by Trump's 2024 campaign. Detentions on that scale are far more difficult than they might seem.

Today, ICE has 22,000 employees and a budget of just over $9 billion. It has over 500 detention centers, jails, and prisons nationwide. Those detained are both undocumented immigrants apprehended by ICE, and those detained by other agencies, such as Border Patrol. About 34,000 people are held in immigration detention on any given day, from about 200,000 detained annually.

According to a study by the CATO Institute, the vast majority detained since 2024 have no criminal records or any other history of violent or anti-social offences—apart from crossing the border, which is a minor misdemeanor offence. They are simply immigrants looking for work or shelter from life-threatening abuse in their home countries. ICE deports many of these, releases some, and continues detaining others, without much rhyme or reason regarding access to court hearings or not.

From 2012 to early 2018, ICE also wrongfully arrested and detained 1,480 U.S. citizens, including many who spent months or years in immigration detention. A 2018 Los Angeles Times investigation found that ICE's reliance on incomplete and error-prone databases and lax investigations led to these erroneous detentions. From 2008 to 2018, ICE was sued for wrongful arrest by more than two dozen U.S. citizens, who had been detained for periods ranging from one day to over three years. Also, about 10 people have died in ICE custody since January 2025, usually from being in poor health when seized, but with no follow-up treatment once detained.

But the ICE we know today is on the cusp of a major transformation and expansion. Vice President JD Vance put a spotlight on the matter when he voted to break the tie on the 'Big Bill:' ICE Funding mattered the most "Everything else? The Congressional Budget Office score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy? is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions," he said.

Instead of its current $9 billion budget, ICE is now slotted for some $170 billion.

Yes, that's a 20-fold increase. It will make ICE the largest police force in U.S. history. As Leah Greenberg, co-chair of the progressive activist group, Indivisible, put it on Twitter/X: "They are just coming right out and saying they want an exponential increase in $$$ so they can build their own personal Gestapo."

What Greenburg means is the new expanded ICE will not be controlled by the regular U.S Armed Forces, nor state and local governments. It remains solely an instrument of a Trump cabinet appointee. The current head of ICE, Todd Lyons, appointed in March 2025, is still unconfirmed by the Senate. This makes ICE, in effect, into Trump's paramilitary.

For starters, ICE will quickly double in size, adding 10,000 new agents and another 9000 new border guards. The number of holding facilities for detainees will expand proportionally.

How is this pending expansion affecting the morale of ICE agents? For some, morale is now quite high, with many new resources in the pipeline. But for others, surprisingly, morale is low. They do not like entering neighborhoods or workplaces where they are not welcome, detaining people without any criminal background or threat. They are seeking the first viable option to resign from the force. We should keep this in mind when checking out ICE agents.

In the years ahead, we can expect vastly increased ICE activities on the streets and workplaces where immigrants might gather. We should note that our local police are usually not required to help them enforce immigration laws. Regardless of any claims to the contrary, every person on U.S. soil has the same rights of equal protection and due process under the law. We should do our best to see that everyone knows their right and is respected in exercising them.

Carl’s LeftLin

  

GOP Budget Bill Would Make ICE "Largest Federal Law Enforcement Agency i...

We Will Get Through This.: Resist Trump etal

Budgets: California Has Choices

 

Here’s what you need to know:

Policymakers have choices. Our elected leaders — both in Washington and Sacramento — can and should protect basic need programs that support the health and well-being of vulnerable Californians, including children, families, and people with disabilities.

In Congress, our state representatives of both parties should reject cuts, including those that are disguised under the names of "work requirements," "cost-shifts," or "reforms." These are still cuts — and they hurt people by taking away their access to food, health care, and other basic needs.

At the state level, California leaders can choose to balance the budget in ways that blunt federal harm and prioritize people. That includes creating a state tax system where everyone pays their fair share at a time when federal leaders are doing the opposite.

We explain more in our recent commentary featured in CalMatters on why California must take bold action to protect people from harmful federal proposals.

California Budget Project.

"Support Our Teachers" (CC)

Congressman Kevin Kiley Supports Massive Cuts to Schools. Do You?

 

Americans are still recovering from the ripple effects of the pandemic, particularly our most vulnerable populations. Students still have a vast array of social, emotional and academic needs as they head back to school, and workers are re-entering a changing workplace. On top of that, the need for accessible healthcare is only growing. Now is not the time for Congress to make massive cuts to the programs we depend on, but that’s exactly what many Republicans are trying to do. It’s up to us to spread the word to make sure our communities know what’s at stake.   Click here to write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper; you can potentially reach thousands of people with this simple action that takes just minutes of your time. Here’s what you need to know about the House Republicans’ appropriations bill. It would:  Cut $63.8 billion from public K-12 education—a 28 percent decrease from 2023 funding and the lowest possible funding for the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill since 2008.  Cut Title I funding by 80 percent, which could force a nationwide reduction of 220,000 teachers from classrooms serving low-income students. This would make our already unsustainable nationwide shortage of educators even worse.  Eliminate programs for English language learners (Title III), supports for educators (Title II-A), social and emotional learning grants, Promise Neighborhoods and Magnet Schools.  Cut funding for community schools—schools that serve not just students but their families.   Decimate funding for job training, cancer research, health initiatives for mental health, addressing the opioid crisis, eliminating HIV/AIDS, and more.   Continue the Republicans’ attacks on women’s health by cutting programs to support maternal health, eliminating programs that provide contraception and health services, and adding amendments to push their draconian agenda to ban abortion and make reproductive healthcare harder to access.  It’s up to us to spread the word and show lawmakers that the public refuses to allow our educational institutions to be attacked by political extremists. At the AFT, we’re working to ensure that every child has what they need to thrive. Our Real Solutions for Kids and Communities campaign is all about focusing on students’ loneliness, learning loss and literacy. But our communities must understand who is trying to cut vital education and community programs—because it takes resources to support educators and school staff.  We need your help to do that. Please write a letter to the editor and spread the word. In unity,  Randi Weingarten  AFT President

California Budget Proposal Increases Funds for K-!2 Schools.

 From. California Budget and Policy Project 

Revised Budget Funds a Large Cost-of-Living Adjustment for K-12 Education

The largest share of Prop. 98 funding goes to California’s school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education (COEs), which provide instruction to 5.9 million students in grades kindergarten through 12. The governor’s revised spending plan uses one-time dollars to help fund a large cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) to the state’s K-12 education funding formula — the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Specifically, the May Revision:

• Provides a $3.4 billion year-over-year increase for the LCFF. The LCFF provides school districts, charter schools, and COEs a base grant per student, adjusted to reflect the number of students at various grade levels, as well as additional grants for the costs of educating English learners, students from low-income families, and foster youth. The May Revision would fund an 8.22% COLA for the LCFF in 2023-24, up from the 8.13% COLA estimated in the January budget proposal. The revised spending plan proposes to use $2.7 billion in one-time dollars to help pay for the large increase in ongoing support for the LCFF. According to the Assembly Budget Committee, the May Revision would provide an estimated $79.8 billion in funding for the LCFF in 2023-24.
• Cuts approximately $2.5 billion from the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant. The 2022-23 budget agreement provided $7.9 billion for a one-time block grant to K-12 school districts, COEs, and charter schools allocated based on the percentage of enrolled students who are English learners, students from low-income families, or foster youth. The May Revision proposes to reduce this funding to approximately $5.4 billion. 
• Cuts the Arts, Music, and Instructional Materials Discretionary Block Grant by approximately $600 million more than proposed in January. The governor’s January budget proposed reducing, from nearly $3.6 billion to approximately $2.3 billion, one-time funding for a per pupil discretionary block grant provided to local educational agencies (LEAs) in the 2022-23 budget agreement. The May Revision proposes to reduce funding for the block grant to approximately $1.8 billion. 
• Increases funding by approximately $300 million for school nutrition programs. For the 2022-23 school year, California established a Universal Meals Program that provides two free meals per day to any public K-12 student regardless of income eligibility.  The revised spending plan includes an additional $110 million in one-time dollars and approximately $191 million in ongoing dollars to fully fund increased demand for the program in 2022-23 and 2023-24. 
• Provides $80 million in ongoing funding for COEs serving students in juvenile court. The revised spending plan states these additional resources would be used to support staffing and programming requirements for students in alternative school settings. The May Revision also proposes to increase COEs’ LCFF base grants by 50% for the additional year of assistance they would provide, based on a proposal in the governor’s January budget, to school districts with performance issues. 
• Provides $20 million for the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program (BTPDP). The BTPDP was established in 2018, but it expired in June 2021. The May Revision would reinstitute the program and make funding available through 2028-29.  
• Funds an increase in the COLA for non-LCFF programs. The May Revision increases the COLA for several categorical programs that remain outside of the LCFF to 8.22% from the 8.13% COLA provided in January.
• Maintains $300 million for a proposed “equity multiplier” add-on to the LCFF. The revised spending plan would continue to provide ongoing funding proposed in January for LEAs with large shares of students from families with low incomes. Additionally, the May Revision states that it reflects changes to the state’s K-12 accountability system to clarify those proposed in January “including additional assurances that all LEAs with low student performance address disparities in the preparation of their educators.” 
• Proposes to screen students in kindergarten through 2nd grade for risk of reading difficulties. The May Revision proposes to make these screenings mandatory by the 2025-26 school year and would require LEAs to provide services to identified students, including those at risk of dyslexia. 
• Extends the deadline for spending Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP) funds. The 2022-23 budget agreement provided $4 billion for the ELOP. The May Revision extends the  June 30, 2023 deadline for spending ELOP funds received in 2021-22 and 2022-23 to June 30, 2024.

California Budget Priorities

The California Budget & Policy Center, a nonpartisan, research and analysis nonprofit, released the following statement by Executive Director Chris Hoene following the release of Governor Newsom’s proposed 2023-24 state budget:

“In the good times and the bad, what Californians need to thrive doesn’t change. Stable income, affordable housing, and reliable child care. Families, children, and individuals need access to quality education, well-paying jobs, comprehensive health care, and a strong social safety net to fall back on when times get tough. 

“While state revenues are down for the coming budget year, state leaders must remain committed to existing programs, and our state’s recent progress on essential services — like Medi-Cal expansion and affordable housing investments — must remain undeterred. Policymakers must also explore pathways to build upon these essential services and better meet the needs of millions of California families. 

“As Californians continue to experience the rising costs of basic needs like food and housing, and Congress eliminates critical programs like emergency food assistance, our state’s leaders should invest in essential services to meet the needs of our communities. This is especially important for Black, Latinx, and other Californians of color, and Californians with low incomes who repeatedly bear the brunt of economic downturns, rising cost of living, and austerity policies.

“State leaders have the tools and resources, such as using a portion of reserves and diverting spending that supports the wealthy and corporations, to expand health care, affordable housing, child care, nutrition assistance, and educational opportunities for Californians.

“The Legislature and administration should reevaluate costly tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, like the governor’s proposed extension of the film tax credit, and instead, protect core services and make strategic investments in economic support to ensure Californians with low incomes are able to secure the resources they need to thrive.

“Budgets are about values, and the 2023-24 budget proposal begs the question: Are policymakers willing to use all available tools and improve the state’s tax system to invest in the millions of Californians left out of our state’s great wealth?”

 

$225 Million In New Revenue: 10 Facts About the SCUSD Budget

$225 Million In New Revenue: 10 Facts About the SCUSD Budget: Fact # 1:  Since the 2012-2013 school year, the District has run a surplus every year except one:  2017-18 (2012-13 to 2018-19 Projections & 2012-13 to 2018-19 Actuals).  The District was told by the Sacramento County Office of Education it needed to make budget cuts to offset the costs of our contract settlement. Instead Superintendent […]

SCUSD Aguilar Takes a Big Pay Increase While Schools Closed

Sacramento City Schools Superintendent Aguilar Takes a Big Pay Increase While Schools Closed

Teachers union angry over Aguilar’s pay increase while refusing to pay substitute teachers

By Katy Grimes, March 30, 2020 7:46 am

In March 2019, California Globe reported Sacramento City Unified School District  Superintendent Jorge Aguilar and seven other administrators spent more than $35,000 to attend a six-day conference at the Harvard Business School, while the district teetered on the verge of insolvency, and under the threat of state takeover as it struggled with a $35 million budget gap.

Flash forward one year and SCUSD is still faltering; the district threatened to pink slip teachers right before the March 3 Primary Election. This is likely how the school district managed to convince voters within the Sacramento school district to vote to authorize the district to sell $750 million of bonds to improve schools’ facilities.

While this infusion of funding may stave off the bleeding for now, the Sacramento City Teachers Association just reported, “Superintendent Aguilar has taken a significant pay increase after stating last year that he would not accept a salary increase while the District had significant financial issues.”

In a March 25 email sent to union members titled, “SCUSD to Present Its Draft Plan for Distance Learning Tomorrow (Thursday), District Refuses to Pay Day-to-Day Subs, as the Superintendent Takes His Pay Increase,” the union questions district priorities.

Notably, the district is refusing “to pay short-term, day-to-day substitutes as required by Governor Newsom’s March 13 Executive Order,” during the shutdown of schools over the coronavirus crisis, which SCTA says is “saving the District $44,000 per day or more than $800,000 per month. We asked the District what it intended to spend the money on and received no response.”

SCTA: ‘The financial crisis must be over’

According to documents provided by the Sacramento School District, Superintendent Aguilar’s total compensation climbed from $380,692.47 to $414,818, an increase of $34,126 or 9.0% (see below).

This does not include Mr. Aguilar’s second salary from UC Merced.

The documents showing the SCUSD pay increases are here, here and here.

“In contrast, a day-to-day substitute would have to work 155 out of the 180 instructional days in a school year to just earn the $34,000 in Mr. Aguilar’s salary increase,” SCTA reported. “It would take a substitute 10 years, or more than 1800 days of work–to earn Mr. Aguilar’s full annual compensation package.”

“It is truly unfortunate that SCUSD refuses to rank the economic well-being of staff as a high priority, just as the District put the health of hundreds of SEIU classified members at risk last week,” SCTA said. “As SEIU Local 1021 Chapter President Karla Faucett stated: ‘This is the same administration that treated classified employees like cannon fodder by forcing hundreds of non-essential staff to report to work at the SCUSD central office four days after Governor’s Newsom’s Executive Order closing schools. It’s outrageous that this disregard for SCUSD employees, in this case substitute teachers, is allowed to continue.'”

“The District found the money to increase Mr. Aguilar’s pay. But it doesn’t have to look for money for the substitutes–it’s already provided in the Governor’s Executive Order. Now the District just needs to follow the law.”

SCUSD 2017-18 Superintendent Aguilar pay. (Photo: Screen capture)

https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/sacramento-city-schools-superintendent-aguilar-takes-a-big-pay-increase-while-schools-closed/?fbclid=IwAR3HwTapR8tfzwkKYfPSzE6ZIz5lFxTmHYbHrQm8qYgTT5vbB4ypc5goMRY

SCUSD Superintendent Aguilar 2018-19 pay. (Photo: screen captureRecent Posts

SCUSD Budget Crisis- State Audit

December 10, 2019====See also  Community Forum post below.
2019-108
The Governor of California President pro Tempore of the Senate Speaker of the Assembly
State Capitol
Sacramento, California 95814
Dear Governor and Legislative Leaders:
As directed by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, my office conducted an audit of the Sacramento City Unified School District (Sacramento Unified). Our assessment focused on Sacramento Unified’s financial condition, and the following report details the audit’s findings and conclusions. We determined that Sacramento Unified has not proactively addressed its financial problems.
Sacramento Unified failed to take sufficient action to control its costs in three main areas—teacher salaries, employee benefits, and special education. Sacramento Unified increased its spending by $31 million annually when it approved a new labor contract with its teachers union in 2017. Despite warnings from the Sacramento County Office of Education that it could not afford the agreement, the Sacramento City Unified School District Board of Education approved the agreement without a plan for how it would pay for it. Sacramento Unified also failed to control the costs of the generous employee benefits it provides, which increased by 52 percent from fiscal years 2013–14 through 2017–18. We also found that Sacramento Unified lacked clear policies to guide staff on what are appropriate expenditures for special education, limiting its ability to control these costs. Consequently, Sacramento Unified projects it will largely deplete its general fund in October 2021 and will likely need to accept a loan from the State to continue operating. If it accepts such a loan, the required loan payments would result in less funding for students and a loss of local control to an appointed administrator.
Although both Sacramento Unified and its teachers union have proposed changes to stabilize the district’s finances, we found that the proposals are unlikely to solve the district’s ongoing financial problems. In fact, several proposals from the teachers union would increase costs dramatically. Given that accepting state assistance would result in less funds for students, we would have expected Sacramento Unified to develop a detailed plan for resolving its financial concerns, but it has not done so. It states that it needs to make $27 million in reductions by fiscal year 2021–22, but even that amount may not be sufficient to end its deficit spending. We have identified a number of options the district could take, including making changes to salaries and benefits for different groups of employees; however, if it is to avoid the negative effects of insolvency, Sacramento Unified must act quickly to develop and implement a plan.
Respectfully submitted,
ELAINE M. HOWLE, CPA California State Auditor

Report is not the same as the SCUSD press release on the subject.

The Mess in the SCUSD Budget

Nikki Milevsky Stands Up tom Sac Bee Bully Marcos Breton

Sacramento, October 17, 2019--This morning the Sacramento Bee posted an op ed from SCTA First Vice President Nikki Milevsky in which she responds to the latest attack from Sac Bee opinion writer Marcos Breton.

You can view her editorial here, or read below:


"Four weeks into this new school year, more than 100 teaching vacancies remain unfilled. Thousands of Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) students are in classrooms without fully credentialed educators. At C.K. McClatchy High School, one government teacher surveyed her class and found that more than half of her students had a temporary substitute teacher for some of their classes.

How did we get into such a mess?
In February, SCUSD somehow failed to count 730 students in its enrollment figures – which could have been an $8 million per year mistake. Incredibly, the district superintendent and the county administrator charged with overseeing the district’s finances confirmed the error on April 1, but hid this information from the public. Nevertheless, SCUSD plowed ahead in May with layoffs.

While the district reports substantially lower numbers, we know that more than 400 staff were laid off – including 175 certificated teachers – making SCUSD the only major school district in California to implement mass layoffs during a national teacher shortage.

Now the district can’t fill positions. Would you want to work in a school district that lays off dynamic young educators based on dodgy budget numbers?

In March, a top state education finance official, Michael Fine, said he has “no confidence” in the district’s financial data and that he has other serious concerns. District leaders also kept this information from the public and even from members of the school board.

In the face of poorly staffed classrooms, improper budgets and “no confidence” from state officials, what’s the path forward for Sacramento public schools?

Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Bretón thinks he has the answer: He says teachers should sit down and shut up. Breton believes the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA), which represents district educators, should accept whatever the school board demands. He maintains teachers should agree to set aside the collective bargaining agreement, a contract that was personally negotiated by the superintendent with union representatives and unanimously approved by the school board.

Bretón also says teachers and others who care about our schools should stop organizing, stop talking and stop holding our elected school board accountable.

You are wrong, Mr. Bretón. This situation is too critical to stay silent and, as education activists, we won’t apologize for robustly advocating on behalf of our students and families.