President Trump requested $8.82 billion for the Homeland Security Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement for fiscal 2019, $8.29 billion of it in discretionary funds.
ICE Budget highlights include:
- $570.9 million for an additional 2,000 law enforcement officers and 1,312 support personnel, including funding for Office of the Principal Legal Advisor attorneys. The law enforcement officers are to be allocated across Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations.
- $29.4 million for added IT infrastructure and cybersecurity capacity to support the new hires. ICE plans to increase network bandwidth, data storage capacity, and processing power.
- $2.8 billion for 52,000 detention beds, 49,500 of them adult beds and 2,500 family beds. Of the adult beds, 46,846 would be funded from discretionary appropriations and 2,654 by mandatory fees.
- $44.2 million for additional personnel, contract support, and equipment to train newly hired officers and mission support personnel. Funds would go to preparing instructors and to relocations, trainings, certifications, overtime, and equipment for the Office of Training and Tactical Programs, Headquarters; ICE Academies; and the Firearms and Tactics Offices.
- $6.5 million for additional Title III wiretaps to target criminal activities, gather evidence for ongoing investigations, and disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organizations.
- $84.4 milion for Tactical Communications (TACCOM) Radio Refresh & Site Expansion. The budget would provide $44.8 million for hardware and network equipment to initiate the replacement of 2,800 mobile radios, as well as 2,800 portable radios nearing end of life that lack critical functionality; $8.8 million of that for maintenance and improvements for sites in San Francisco and Puerto Rico; and the remaining $30.8 million to enable ICE to expand to two new TACCOM sites in San Antonio and El Paso.
- $34.9 million for facilities-related enhancement: $10.0 million for critical repairs at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, and $24.9 million for capacity expansion of leased facilities to accommodate new personnel.
- $4.7 million to continue the migration of ICE’s proprietary legacy financial system to a shared services provider.
- $511.1 million for contract/chartered flights and commercial airlines for escorted and unescorted removals of illegal immigrants.
- $184.4 million for ICE’s Alternatives to Detention Program, to monitor 82,000 average daily participants who may pose a flight risk but are not considered a threat to U.S. communities. Low-risk individuals are placed under intensive supervision through home visits, office visits, alert response, court tracking, and/or technology, including electronic monitoring.
- $131.9 million for E-Verify operations and upgrades, $22.8million of it to prepare for eventual mandatory use for all U.S. workers nationwide. E-Verify compares information across many national databases to confirm employment eligibility
