AILA Denounces Passage of Draconian Immigration Spending Bill: A $150 Billion Blueprint for Mass Deportation and Fear

Washington, D.C. – The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is dismayed by the Senate’s narrow 51-50 passage of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a sprawling 1,000-page spending package that injects $150 billion into a punitive, enforcement-only immigration agenda at the expense of health care for Americans, the environment, and a larger deficit.

Approved over bipartisan objections and only with the Vice President's tie-breaking vote, the bill represents the most sweeping expansion of immigration enforcement in modern U.S. history, fueling mass deportations, expanding detention infrastructure, and imposing devastating new financial barriers to legal immigration.

“This legislation is a blueprint for mass exclusion and fear,” said AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson. “It allocates tens of billions to walls, jails, and agents, while leaving the humanitarian, legal, and economic realities of our immigration system in the dust, all at the expense of Americans health care and other essential needs. All of this, despite even President Trump recently acknowledging that mass deportation is having devastating consequences on businesses and communities around the country.”

Among the most alarming provisions:

• $59 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CPB) personnel, vehicles and facilities, including $47 billion for border wall, $7 billion total for CBP agents and vehicles, and $5 billion for CBP facilities and checkpoints;
• $45 billion for family detention and adult detention; and,
• New, burdensome fees on individuals pursuing lawful immigration pathways, including asylum, TPS, and lawful permanent residence.

“These exorbitant new fees will force desperate families to choose between food and freedom,” Johnson continued. “Asylum is a right under U.S. and international law—not a privilege reserved only for those who can pay.”

“Once again, the rule of law is the loser in today’s vote. Donald Trump is openly fantasizing about deporting American citizens he doesn’t like. And now Congress is handing him the tools to do it by allocating billions for a mass deportation force with virtually no guardrails. AILA urges the public, legal community, and policymakers to resist this dangerous shift toward an enforcement-only system that abandons our nation’s values of fairness, due process, and humane treatment of immigrants,” Johnson concluded.