U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Summary
The Homeland Security Act's 2003 merger of civil immigration and criminal customs authority: 21,757 budgeted staff and $10.42 billion under a continuing resolution, plus a separate $75 billion reconciliation fund that grew ICE to 30,215 employees by April 2026 -- the Good Citizen series' entry on the agency that arrests, detains, investigates, and removes.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
's two enforcement directorates produce most of its countable output. Since January 20, 2025 (data through March 2026), ERO arrested nearly 457,000 people and removed more than 565,000⧉ with final orders, against 41,500 budgeted detention beds⧉. In calendar 2025, HSI arrested more than 4,800 people in child-exploitation cases, rescued nearly 1,500 child victims, dismantled over 2,400 human-smuggling operations⧉, and seized 2.5 million pounds of narcotics and about $875 million in currency and assets. OPLA represented the government in nearly 2 million removal hearings⧉ before immigration courts that year.
View data as table
| Enforcement and Removal Operations | 5,568.5 | custody, fugitive ops, transportation & removal |
|---|---|---|
| Homeland Security Investigations | 2,459.1 | domestic + international investigations, intelligence |
| Mission Support | 1,517.5 | IT, human capital, acquisition, security |
| Office of the Principal Legal Advisor | 441.5 | removal-hearing litigation |
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress has not passed a full-year FY2026 Homeland Security appropriations act; operates on a continuing resolution annualized at $10.42 billion in budget authority and 21,757 full-time-equivalent staff⧉, flat against FY2025. That excludes $75 billion in reconciliation funding 2025's Working Families Tax Cut Act gave ICE⧉, of which had obligated $11 billion by March 2026 to hire 11,000 new officers and agents -- growing the agency to 30,215 employees by April 2026⧉. Against the Census Bureau's 341.8 million U.S. residents⧉, that annualized budget alone works out to $30.49 per person.
Why is it good for society?
Before 2003, civil immigration authority sat with the INS and criminal customs-investigative authority sat with the Customs Service -- neither agency could pair administrative leverage with criminal referral power against the same target. The 2003 merger gave ICE both⧉; HSI's 2025 casework shows what that does: agents dismantled more than 2,400 human-smuggling operations and rescued nearly 1,500 children from ongoing sexual abuse⧉, cases that typically need both an immigration hold and a criminal referral to prosecute. Split back into single-purpose agencies, neither tool works alone.
- 's FY2026 budget is annualized from a continuing resolution -- $10.42 billion and 21,757 , flat against FY2025 -- because Congress has not enacted a full-year FY2026 Homeland Security appropriations bill.
- Separately, 2025's $75 billion reconciliation law (of which $11 billion was obligated by March 2026) funded a hiring surge to 30,215 employees and let HSI rescue nearly 1,500 children from exploitation and dismantle over 2,400 human-smuggling operations in calendar 2025.
Your handles.* Report a crime or suspicious activity to through the ICE Tip Line (866--2-). Locate someone in custody through the Online Detainee Locator System. File a civil-rights or civil-liberties complaint about conduct with the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Sources(6) ▾
- U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Budget Overview -- Fiscal Year 2027 Congressional Justification (2026-04-03) — 's own FY2027 congressional budget justification, published April 2026 -- the most current dated summary of 's budget authority and staffing across FY2025 (Full-Year CR), FY2026 (Annualized CR), and FY2027 (President's Budget request), broken out by directorate. Source for this entry's budget/ KPIs, the by-program chart, and the identity paragraph's structure. Wayback's save-page-now endpoint returned HTTP 520 on repeated attempts at read time (2026-07-16, service-wide outage, not specific to this URL); the document was instead independently retrieved via direct HTTPS fetch and read in full locally (SHA-256 0032b46d26c2740898cd5a10f531cc343202c1a5209175476361a3f42c338722), with every quoted figure below matched verbatim against that local copy. dhs.gov · original document
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Testimony of Todd M. Lyons, Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director, ICE, before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security: The Fiscal Year 2027 Budget for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2026-04-16) — On-record congressional testimony by 's own acting director, the most current dated statement of 's workload figures (arrests, removals, detention beds, HSI casework, OPLA hearings) and of the 2025 reconciliation law's funding and hiring effects. Source for this entry's workload paragraph, the reconciliation-funding and current-headcount figures, and the mechanism cited in the final section. Wayback's save-page-now endpoint returned HTTP 520 on repeated attempts at read time (2026-07-16, service-wide outage); the document was independently retrieved via direct HTTPS fetch and read in full locally (SHA-256 13d2de6499c5653a5777066bfacd76cccf62c2712d74d96278bd6ef7ce524a86), with every quoted figure below matched verbatim against that local copy. ice.gov · original document
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, History of ICE (2026-07-16) — 's own official history page: the statutory basis and effective date of 's creation, the predecessor agencies merged into it, its directorate structure, and its headquarters address. Source for this entry's identity paragraph and headquarters geolocation. Wayback's save-page-now endpoint returned HTTP 520 on repeated attempts at read time (2026-07-16, service-wide outage); the page was independently retrieved via direct HTTPS fetch and its full HTML saved locally (SHA-256 e812b904a8bc7f7fc0bc2ce72530fac9baf5935496e5e8a38a00f21dc0669d6f), with every quoted passage below matched verbatim against that local copy. ice.gov · original document
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Who We Are (2026-07-16) — 's own 'Who We Are' page: the exact primary-source statement of which two predecessor agencies were merged to create , and each directorate's function. Source for this entry's merger claim (identity paragraph and the mechanism paragraph in 'Why is it good for society?'). Wayback's save-page-now endpoint returned HTTP 520 on repeated attempts at read time (2026-07-16, service-wide outage); the page was independently retrieved via direct HTTPS fetch and its full HTML saved locally (SHA-256 dea9430becfdb8ebf9516142b0be5efcc3669da240124974741495418fa74b27), with the quoted passage below matched verbatim against that local copy. ice.gov · original document
- U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Bill Summary: Homeland Security Fiscal Year 2026 Appropriations Bill (2026) — Senate Appropriations Committee staff summary of the FY2026 Homeland Security appropriations bill, used only as corroborating background (not a cited fact source in the body): it independently confirms the ~$10 billion flat-funding level for and explains why a lapse in annual appropriations does not shut down -- the 2025 reconciliation law separately gave $190 billion, over $75 billion of it for . Framed advocacy language (majority/minority characterizations of the bill) graded down from A to B for partisan framing, though the procedural and dollar facts it states are independently checkable against the budget document above. appropriations.senate.gov · original document
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The Census Bureau's own Vintage 2025 national population estimate release, giving the U.S. resident population as of July 1, 2025 -- the per-resident denominator for this entry's cost-per-person KPI, per better_metrics.md's sourced-denominator discipline. Already sealed in Artemis (indexed via the good-citizen-gao entry's ingest pass); reused here rather than re-captured. census.gov · original document
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was created under the Homeland Security Act of 2002⧉, effective March 2003, merging the investigative and interior-enforcement elements of the U.S. Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service⧉ into one bureau -- combining civil and criminal legal authority no predecessor agency held alone⧉. is headquartered at Potomac Center North in Washington, DC⧉, organized into four directorates: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), and Mission Support.