On June 24, the House Appropriations Committee marked up and passed its fiscal year (FY) 2026 Homeland Security bill. The bill would provide the baseline budget for the administration to ratchet up its mass assaults on our communities, trampling constitutional rights through dragnet immigration arrests and disappearances, and for the expansion of the mass detention apparatus.
It would provide billions for private contractors profiting from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending, including private prisons, military and surveillance companies. The bill also slashes critical funds for oversight and application processing, includes poison pill policy riders and would allow for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to siphon funds for emergency and disaster services for more detention space and prohibits DHS funding for welcoming cities. It also includes an amendment passed during markup that tramples fundamental protections for asylum seekers and refugees, and mandates that every person in immigration proceedings (millions of people) be placed under real time electronic monitoring.
Our communities are reeling from militarized assaults in Los Angeles that threaten to spread to other cities, the separation of hundreds of children from their parents and caregivers, and a nationwide operation to detain and disappear immigrants appearing in court hearings and ICE check-ins. The Trump administration is also attempting to suppress and deter authorized congressional oversight of immigration detention facilities – in contravention of appropriations law that has been in place for years. Passing this bill will reward and enable more lawlessness and executive overreach, impacting all our rights. The report to accompany the FY26 Homeland Security bill itself even raises concern about ICE’s budgetary mismanagement, noting that ICE has been spending more than its appropriated levels while taking from other DHS operational priorities in an “especially egregious” manner. We are grateful for members who spoke out against this bill and fought for amendments during the markup. We urge members of Congress to fight to remove the worst poison pill policy riders from the bill and ensure the worst provisions do not pass into law.