The tax and spending bill passed by Congress on Thursday will triple federal funding for immigrant detention centers, setting the stage for a rapid expansion of these facilities and adding to concerns about the treatment of the growing numbers of immigrant detainees.

Congress allocated $45 billion to spend locking up immigrants over the next four years — more than the government spent on detention during the Obama, Biden and first Trump administrations combined, federal data show. The bill also includes $46.5 billion for building the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and $6 billion for border technology and surveillance, along with other border security and immigration measures.

This is the most “funding we have seen for a border immigration agenda in the history of the country,” said Lauren-Brooke Eisen, who researches criminal justice and incarceration in her role as a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law. “We are seeing a wholesale expansion of ICE detention centers.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they plan to use the money to roughly double the nation’s detention capacity to 100,000 beds, giving them more capacity to arrest undocumented immigrants targeted for deportation. The average daily population of ICE detainees rose to 56,000 last month — the highest number since ICE began releasing those figures during the first Trump administration — and administration officials have acknowledged the surge in immigrant detainees has sometimes outpaced their ability to accommodate all of them.

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