How Congress divided DHS’s $260.6 billion in reconciliation funding, and the oversight disputes that followed

By Renata Vos

WASHINGTON — Two budget reconciliation laws enacted in the past 16 months appropriated $260.56 billion to the Department of Homeland Security and its components, according to an Inquisitor tally of the enacted texts, with 78% of it directed to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Neither law’s homeland security provisions contain a dedicated appropriation for the department’s inspector general, the office Congress relies on to audit how the money is spent.

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The administration says the money is the core of its border agenda. A White House fact sheet on the first law said it “permanently secures our borders by making the largest border security investment in history and empowers ICE to deport the millions of illegal aliens that entered under Joe Biden.” It said the law funds “AT LEAST one million annual removals,” detention capacity for an average daily population of at least 100,000, the hiring of 10,000 new ICE personnel, 5,000 customs officers and 3,000 Border Patrol agents, and “the biggest upgrade to the Coast Guard since World War II.”

The first law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Public Law 119-21), passed the Senate 51-50 on July 1, 2025, and the House 218-214 on July 3, and was signed July 4, according to Congress.gov. The second, the Secure America Act (Public Law 119-98), passed the Senate 52-47 on June 5, 2026, and the House 214-212 on June 9, and was signed June 10, according to the Congress.gov record. Both were enacted by narrow margins through budget reconciliation, which is not subject to a Senate filibuster.

Methodology

The Inquisitor added every dollar figure appropriated to DHS or a DHS component in Sections 40001, 90001 through 90007 and 100051 through 100057 of P.L. 119-21, and in Sections 101 through 104 and 201 through 203 of P.L. 119-98. “Of which” set-asides inside a larger appropriation were not double-counted. The tally excludes money appropriated to the Justice Department, including the $3.5 billion state and local reimbursement fund in Section 100055 and immigration court funding, as well as new immigration fees that the 2025 law created. The figures are appropriations, not obligations or outlays; the Inquisitor did not find a public DHS accounting of obligations by section.

The $260.56 billion total matches the “more than $260 billion” figure cited by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in an Oct. 19 letter to Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Where the money went, by law and section

Nearly all of the money remains available until Sept. 30, 2029. The exception is the $10 billion State Border Security Reinforcement Fund, which is available until Sept. 30, 2034. FEMA may use up to 1% of that fund to administer the grants.

By component

Figures are rounded and may not sum exactly.

The 2026 law also draws a line the 2025 law did not. It splits CBP and ICE funding between immigration enforcement and other missions. For example, its $9.55 billion for Border Patrol personnel and $7.45 billion for Homeland Security Investigations must go to “functions other than” immigration and customs enforcement, while separate sections fund the immigration enforcement work. The 2026 law also bars buying surveillance towers that CBP has not “tested and accepted” as able to deliver autonomous capabilities.

The inspector general’s access dispute

Neither law’s homeland security titles includes a line item for the DHS Office of Inspector General. In June, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee rejected a Peters amendment to the Secure America Act that would have directed nearly $1 billion to the inspector general, according to Peters’s office, as the Inquisitor reported Oct. 26.

The office’s access to department records has been disputed for much of the year. In a March 2 letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House homeland security committees and the House Oversight Committee, Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari wrote that the department “has systematically obstructed the work” of his office. An attachment dated Feb. 26 listed 11 instances of what it called unreasonable denials of access.

Five of the 11 entries involve ICE or CBP data systems, the two components that received most of the reconciliation money. Cuffari wrote that without direct access, his office “cannot independently assess completeness or reliability of data” in some audits.

The department disputed his account. According to Cuffari’s letter, DHS General Counsel James Percival replied on Jan. 30 that the department would provide access once the inspector general justified his requests under a framework of “six distinct variables.” Percival’s letter, as Cuffari describes it, characterized the office as seeking “continuous, unlimited, and real time access to all information systems of the Department at any time” and raised the prospect of “fishing expeditions.” Cuffari said his office had made no such request. He also wrote that the secretary, then Kristi Noem, had asked for a list of all pending inspector general matters so she could consider whether to terminate any under 5 U.S.C. § 417(a)(2), the statute that lets the secretary limit inspector general work on national security grounds.

The dispute crossed party lines. At a Senate hearing in March, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told Noem that “these matters should have been ironed out a long time ago,” and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) asked, “Does anyone have any idea how bad it has to be for the inspector general to come out and do this publicly?” according to CBS News. Peters wrote to Percival on March 4 that the committee was examining “potential obstruction of communications by the Inspector General to Congress,” CBS reported.

The Inquisitor could not find any public record showing whether the 11 access disputes have been resolved since March.

The Oct. 19 Peters letter

Peters’s Oct. 19 letter argues that DHS has no meaningful plan to oversee the money. “While the Trump Administration has claimed it is committed to maximizing government efficiency and reducing waste and abuse, current DHS spending and its lack of planning for any meaningful oversight of that spending raises questions about the sincerity of this commitment,” he wrote. His examples included CBP awarding border wall contracts although the government lacks access to more than half of the 700 miles where construction is planned, and $20.5 million spent on detention warehouses the department later decided to sell. Those are Peters’s characterizations; the Inquisitor did not find a public DHS response to the letter.

The committee’s chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), did not sign the Peters letter.

What comes next

The Senate is out until Nov. 9, after the Nov. 3 midterm elections. The House Homeland Security Committee’s Democrats have set a Nov. 4 deadline for DHS records on a $464 million aircraft purchase, and a separate Government Accountability Office report dated September examined ICE and CBP management of body-worn cameras, which the 2026 law funds within ICE’s information technology account.

Who was contacted

The Inquisitor asked DHS, the DHS Office of Inspector General, Chairman Paul’s committee press office, Ranking Member Peters’s office, Chairman Andrew Garbarino’s House committee staff and Ranking Member Bennie Thompson’s committee staff for comment, and will update this story with any response.

Photo: Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich. United States Senate, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).