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chairman donald trump Preparing to be more aggressive immigration Action with billions of dollars of new funding in 2026 feedback Construction ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Trump has already increased immigration patrols in major US cities this year and ordered federal agents to conduct some high-profile raids on businesses.
But they have largely refrained from raiding farms, factories and other businesses that are economically important and known to provide employment. immigrants Without legal status.
ICE and the Border Patrol will receive $170 billion in additional funding through September 2029 — a huge increase in funding over their current annual budget of about $19 billion — after the Republican-controlled Congress passed a massive spending package in July.
Administration Officials say they plan to hire thousands more agents, open new detention centers, hold more immigrants in local jails and partner with outside companies to detect people without legal status.
The expanded deportation plans come despite growing signs of a political backlash ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Miami, one of the cities hardest hit by Trump’s actions because of its large immigrant population, last week elected its first Democratic mayor in nearly three decades in what the mayor-elect said was, in part, a response to the president. Other local polls and polling have suggested growing concern among voters wary of aggressive immigration tactics.
“People are now starting to see this not as an immigration question but as a violation of rights, a violation of due process and an extraconstitutional militarization of neighborhoods,” said Mike Madrid, a moderate Republican political strategist. “There’s no doubt that this is a problem for the president and the Republicans.”
Trump’s overall approval rating on immigration policy fell from 50% in March, before he began taking action in several major US cities, to 41% in mid-December, his strongest issue.
Growing public unease has focused attention on masked federal agents using aggressive tactics such as deploying tear gas in residential neighborhoods and detaining American citizens.
‘There will be an explosion of numbers’
In addition to expanding enforcement actions, Trump has removed thousands of Haitian, Venezuelan and Afghan immigrants from temporary legal status, expanding the pool of people who can be deported as the president has pledged to remove 1 million immigrants each year — a goal he will almost certainly miss this year. Nearly 622,000 immigrants have been deported since Trump took office in January.
White House border czar Tom Homan told Reuters that Trump has delivered on his promise to launch a historic deportation campaign and deport criminals while shutting down illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border. Homan said the number of arrests will increase rapidly as ICE hires more officers and expands detention capacity with the new funding.
“I think you’re going to see a huge jump in the numbers next year,” Homan said.
Homan said the plans “definitely” include more enforcement action at workplaces.
Sarah Pierce, director of social policy at the center-left group Third Way, said American businesses have been reluctant to push back against Trump’s immigration actions over the past year, but they may be motivated to speak out if the attention turns to employers.
Pierce said it will be interesting to see “whether businesses ultimately stand up to this administration.”
Trump, a Republican, reoccupied the White House promising record levels of deportations, saying it was needed after years of high levels of illegal immigration under his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden. He launched a campaign that sent federal agents into American cities in search of potential immigration criminals, leading to protests and lawsuits over racial profiling and violent tactics.
Some businesses closed to avoid raids or due to lack of customers. Parents fearing arrest took their children home from school or had neighbors pick them up. Some US citizens began holding passports.
Despite focusing on criminals in its public statements, government data shows that the Trump administration is arresting more people than previous administrations who have not been charged with any crimes beyond their alleged immigration violations.
Agency data shows that about 41% of the nearly 54,000 people arrested and detained by ICE as of the end of November had no criminal record other than a suspected immigration violation. In the first few weeks in January, before Trump took office, only 6% of people arrested and detained by ICE were not facing charges of other crimes or had been previously convicted.
The Trump administration has also targeted legal immigrants. Agents have arrested spouses of U.S. citizens at their green card interviews, barred people from some countries from their naturalization ceremonies moments before becoming citizens, and revoked thousands of student visas.
Plan to target employers
The administration’s planned focus on job sites in the coming year could lead to many more arrests and hit the U.S. economy and Republican-leaning business owners.
Replacing immigrants arrested during workplace raids could drive up labor costs, undermining Trump’s fight against inflation, which analysts expect to be a major issue in the November elections that will determine control of Congress.
Administration officials earlier this year exempted such businesses from enforcement on Trump’s orders, then quickly reversed course, Reuters reported at the time.
Some immigration hard-liners have called for greater enforcement in the workplace.
“Ultimately you have to go after these employers,” said Jessica Vaughn, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports lower levels of immigration. “When that starts to happen employers will start to clean up their own act.”