The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), Department of Justice (DOJ), will be submitting the following information collection request (ICR) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The proposed information collection was previously published in the Federal Register on July 2, 2025, allowing a 60-day comment period.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), Department of Justice (DOJ), will be submitting the following information collection request (ICR) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The proposed information collection was previously published in the Federal Register on July 1, 2025, allowing a 60-day comment period. A correction to this notice was published in the Federal Register on July 23, 2025, and did not affect the 60-day comment period closing date.
SAN DIEGO — U.S. Customs and Border Protection San Diego Field Office advises the traveling public that, to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a brief halt in northbound traffic operations at the land ports of entry…
HIDALGO, Texas- U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Office of Field Operations, Hidalgo Port of Entry officers apprehended a man wanted in Hidalgo County for an alleged sexual crime against a child.“CBP officers continue to maintain their vigilance…
HIDALGO, Texas—U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Office of Field Operations officers at the Hidalgo International Bridge, intercepted $890,700 in alleged cocaine concealed within a vehicle. “Our frontline CBP officers encountered a driver…
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the Port of Buffalo, Rainbow Bridge border crossing, arrested a United States citizen who had an active warrant out of Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey…
This notification is being issued to the public pursuant to the CBP policy regarding Notification and Review Procedures for Certain Deaths and Deaths in Custody and the Department of Homeland Security FY 2021 Appropriation (H. Rept. 116-458)…
This notification is being issued to the public pursuant to the CBP policy regarding Notification and Review Procedures for Certain Deaths and Deaths in Custody and the Department of Homeland Security FY 2021 Appropriation (H. Rept. 116-458)…
Washington DC, July 1, 2025 — On July 1, the U.S. Senate passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes an unprecedented allocation of funds for immigration detention and enforcement while simultaneously stripping healthcare from millions of Americans.
The bill, passed today with Vice President JD Vance contributing the tie-breaking vote, earmarks some $170 billion for immigration- and border enforcement-related funding provisions. The bill includes:
- $45 billion for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. This represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. It is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system and could result in daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.
- $29.9 billion toward ICE’s enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold.
- Alongside this increased spending in immigration enforcement, between 12 million to 17 million people are at risk of losing their healthcare.
- Caps the number of immigration judges to 800 despite record backlogs in the immigration court system.
- $46.6 billion into border wall construction—more than three times what the Trump administration spent on the wall in its first term, despite the failure of the wall to improve or contribute in any meaningful way to border management strategy
- A new $10 billion fund to reimburse DHS for costs related to “safeguard[ing] the borders of the United States to protect against the illegal entry of persons or contraband.” This funding is nearly 50 percent of CBP’s FY 2024 budget. However, unlike a normal budget, this funding would provide very few guardrails and little guidance to DHS on how the funds must be used. As a result, this would become a slush fund for CBP to largely use however it determined.
For full analysis about what is included in the bill, see the Council’s explainer here.
Altogether, this marks the largest investment in detention and deportation in U.S. history; a policy choice that does nothing to address the systemic failures of our immigration system while inflicting harm, sowing chaos, and tearing families apart.
“This bill will deprive 12 to 17 million Americans of basic health care while investing unprecedented levels of funding in the president’s increasingly unpopular mass deportation agenda, which undermines public safety and creates chaos in American communities,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council. “At a time when polls show more Americans rejecting mass detention and deportation, this bill ignores what Americans want and doubles down on punitive policies that do nothing to address the real problems in our immigration system including court backlogs, a lack of legal pathways to citizenship, and a broken U.S. asylum system.”
The bill’s enforcement-heavy provisions come at the expense of urgently needed investments in asylum processing, legal representation, community-based alternatives to detention, and support for local governments and nonprofits serving new arrivals.
“Throwing billions at detention centers and enforcement agents is short-sighted. Instead, we should be investing in a system aimed at welcoming immigrants that contribute billions to our economy,” said Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. “We don’t need more jail beds and indiscriminate raids. We need balanced solutions that strengthen due process and keep families together.”
The bill will now return to the House of Representatives, where members are expected to vote on final passage later this week. Experts at the American Immigration Council are available to talk more in-depth about the specifics of what’s included in the bill, including immigration court, border funding, what happens to unaccompanied children, the increase in ICE agents, and more.
For additional analysis about what is included in the bill, see the Council’s full explainer here.
The post Senate Approves Unprecedented Spending for Mass Deportation, Ignoring What’s Broken in our Immigration System appeared first on American Immigration Council.
Ilia is a 24-year-old pro-democracy activist who recently fled a threatening environment in his native Russia. But after escaping, he was taken into custody and put into jail-like detention by the very country he believed would protect him: the United States.
“I fled Russia because of increasingly harsh laws, because of a government that started persecuting me for my political views and my sexual orientation,” says Ilia. “I believed the United States would help me.”
Like many critics of the Putin regime, Ilia was outraged when Russian authorities arrested pro-democracy opposition leader Alexei Navalny in January 2021. In response, he joined nation-wide protests and began putting up “Free Navalny” fliers around Krosnodor, the city in southern Russia where he was a university student. The government response was brutal, with thousands of people detained and many beaten or tasered by police. In February 2024, Navalny died under suspicious circumstances in a Russian prison camp.
By then, Ilia had already fled the country, after receiving threats from Russian intelligence officials. Being nonbinary, he faced additional risk under Putin’s increasingly repressive laws; his mere existence could mean persecution or imprisonment.
Ilia made his way to Mexico, where he followed the asylum process to the letter. He spent eight months near the border, waiting for a CBP One appointment. In May 2024, he arrived for his appointment, ready to make his case. Instead, he was taken into custody on the spot and put into detention, ending up at a Louisiana facility known for abuse and neglect.
“I applied for asylum because I believed the U.S. would help me,” Ilia says. “But once I was sent to Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, I faced horrible treatment. The way officers treat detainees is awful. They yell at them, sometimes go as far as to discriminate, make racist remarks, and even subject detainees to sexual abuse.” Ilia has filed multiple complaints over the year he’s spent at Winn, but they go unanswered.
Though detained before President Trump came into office, Ilia has experienced the Trump administration’s hardline immigration stance firsthand. In March 2025, Ilia won his asylum case after an immigration judge considered 900 pages of evidence, including threats from Russian intelligence and letters of support from people who’d witnessed his activism. At this point, Ilia should have been released from detention and allowed to start building his life here. Instead, the Trump administration is refusing to let him out.
Ilia has no criminal history and does not pose a threat to his community. In fact, he won his asylum case, because he was targeted for upholding the very democratic ideals of free speech—upon which this country was founded. The result is prolonged, needless suffering, even for those the system has already deemed worthy of protection.
“The situation [in the detention centers] has gotten worse,” Ilia says, explaining that the facility where he is being kept has been at maximum capacity since Trump took office. “People have started to realize there’s no way out, that they’re just waiting here to be deported, and they’re losing their minds.”
The post Ilia, young Russian dissident facing never-ending detention appeared first on American Immigration Council.