ICE has been granted a $160 billion budget, higher than that allocated for the marines

Question

According to author Don Winslow, ICE’s new budget exceeds that of the Marine’s, following the passage of Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’.

Answer 1

This claim is false. ICE’s current annual budget is around $10 billion. According to Snopes, "The agency plans to spend $10.4 billion in budget year 2025 — which runs from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025 — according to a budget overview document." Regarding Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed by the Senate on July 3, 2025, "the agency would receive an infusion of more than $100 billion through 2029: $45 billion for detention facilities, $46 billion for border wall operations in the U.S.-Mexico border and $14 billion for deportation operations" (TIME). Compared to the U.S. Marines, Stars and Stripes reported "the service’s $53.7 billion budget request is part of the Navy’s $257 billion overall proposed spending plan for fiscal 2025, which [began] Oct. 1." 

Answer 2

The claim “ICE has been granted a $160 billion budget, higher than that allocated for the Marines” is false. In the summer of 2025, a rumor circulated that U.S. lawmakers would allocate a $160 billion budget to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, according to Snopes (snopes), a trusted fact-checking website, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement was given a budget of $75 billion. Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not receive a $160 billion budget, $75 billion is a significantly larger budget than what the U.S. Marines received; however, the U.S. Marines received a total annual budget of $57.26 billion. The annual amount of ICE’s budget was left unclear, with only a large budget that will run through September 2029 ($75 billion). In conclusion, ICE has not been budgeted 160 billion dollars, and appears not to have received a higher budget than the U.S. Marines.

Deng, Rae. “Unpacking Claims Trump Admin Budgeted More Money for ICE than US Marine Corps.” Snopes, Snopes.com, 8 July 2025, www.snopes.com/news/2025/07/08/trump-ice-budget-marines/.

Answer 3

This claim needs updating. ICE’s annual budget for 2025 as detailed by other answers on here ended on September 30, 2025. 

A report from the American Immigration Council published July 1, 2025, https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/press-release/congress-approves-unprecedented-funding-mass-detention-deportation-2025/ , reports:

"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. "

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/big-beautiful-bill-immigration-border-security/ 

- Section 20011 of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (H.R. 1), titled "Improving Department of Defense Border Support and Counter-Drug Missions”, details the upgrades to ICE’s budget. 

(https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text ).

H.R. 1 provides “…funding to hire an additional 10,000 ICE officers in five years, modernize its fleet and other deportation-related transportation costs, and hiring new ICE attorneys to represent the government in immigration court. Because this funding is provided as a lump sum with a list of allowable expenses, H.R. 1 gives ICE significant flexibility in how it uses and allocates this money toward immigration enforcement”

As for marines: 

Report: Page 1 of the Department of Defense Appendix (Technical Supplement to the 2026 Budget, Office of Management and Budget), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/BUDGET-2026-DOD.pdf.

usaspending.gov  shows that the USMC budget is $44.7 billion:

$16B for personnel 

$11.5B for operations 

~$9B for construction 

$6B for general procurement 

~$1B for ammunition 

$0.9B for the Reserves 

$0.3B for Reserves operations

United States Government Budget: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/budget/2026.

Department of Defense/“War”: https://comptroller.war.gov/Budget-Materials/Budget2026/#summary 

According to the above sources, as a result of the "Big Beautiful Bill", the claim does in fact appear to be correct for the forthcoming 2026 spending year. This was not the case in 2025.

Answer 4

This claim is false. According to Margy O’Herron of the Brennan center for justice, Ice’s budget, while increased, is worth 28.7 billion this year. The Marines according to USAspending.gov have a budget of 363 billion. 

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/big-budget-act-creates-deportation-industrial-complex

https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=2025