The massive reconciliation budget bill signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025 presents a generational threat to democracy and our collective health and safety. The bill provoked widespread condemnation from voters and rights groups across a diverse spectrum, but passed the Senate by a one vote margin and the House by just four votes. This bill shells out over $170 billion to balloon the immigration enforcement industrial complex led by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agencies—to the benefit of private prison executives and government contractors. The impact on communities across the country will be dire and will signal historic rollbacks of immigrants’ rights and access to justice.
Update: Soon after the reconciliation megabill H.R. 1 became law, the two agencies responsible for collecting fees — DHS’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Justice Executive Office of Immigration Review — announced they would layer the law’s punishing new fee increases on top of existing fees. As a result, many forms of immigration relief will become unaffordable for the most vulnerable immigrants and asylum seekers. Read NIJC’s July 2025 fee increases explainer.