(C) Common Dreams
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The Anti-Immigrant Policies in Trump’s Final “Big Beautiful Bill,” Explained [1]

['Heidi Altman', 'Ben D Avanzo', 'Jennifer Whitlock']

Date: 2025-08-13

Dramatic expansion of immigration detention, including family detention:

OBBBA funds a dramatic expansion of the U.S. immigration detention system, which is already plagued by inhumane conditions and deaths. The law immediately gives the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) $45 billion to detain immigrant adults and families, available through September 30, 2029. This sum more than quadruples Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s annual detention budget – adding approximately $11.25 billion each year. These funds will enrich private prison companies, whose executives have expressed glee at the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.

The law explicitly approves the use of these funds for family detention, a practice medical and mental health experts decry as causing “psychological trauma and long-term mental health risks” to children, even when used for short periods. Even more alarming, the law proactively allows for the indefinite detention of children and families. This dangerous measure is a blatant violation of protections found in the Flores Settlement Agreement, a judicial settlement that puts guardrails on the U.S. government’s detention of migrant children, including limiting duration of stay.

Supercharged funding for immigration enforcement:

In addition to mass detention funding, the law immediately provides approximately $32 billion for immigration agents and operations related to enforcement and deportation, available through September 30, 2029. The Trump administration has demonstrated that these funds will likely be used in deeply harmful ways – for rampant racial profiling, to rip parents from their children in indiscriminate and terrorizing raids and to further unleash the kind of lawless immigration enforcement experiments that threaten the very underpinnings of democratic rule.

The OBBA is written to provide maximal flexibility to the Trump administration to use enforcement funds with little to no oversight. It also directs funds to be used for certain activities and programs, including:

expedited removal processes that short-cut due process and allow for rapid fire deportations without a day in court;

the 287(g) program, which empowers state and local law enforcement to carry out federal immigration enforcement activities, incentivizing racial profiling and abuses; and

extra-territorial processing of asylum claims, most likely through the Remain in Mexico program that forces asylum seekers to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico while their U.S. court cases proceed.

Supercharged funding for border enforcement and militarization:

The law provides more than $75 billion in enforcement and surveillance funding for border communities that have already endured decades of militarization. This amount – made available through September 30, 2029 – includes $47 billion for construction of the border wall that has already resulted in countless deaths, environmental destruction, and desecration of Native American lands and culture. The remainder of the funds include: $7 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and vehicles; $5 billion for CBP facilities and checkpoints; $6.2 billion for border technology and surveillance; and a $10 billion fund for any border enforcement purposes.

“Extreme vetting” and other policy measures specifically target immigrant kids:

This bill is particularly vicious towards children. In addition to the life-long scars children will endure from the family detention centers built with OBBBA funds, the law includes several policy measures that are effective immediately and undermine due process for migrant children and/or target them for harm:

As described above, the law explicitly approves long-term and even indefinite use of family detention for children, in violation of the Flores Settlement Agreement.

Two separate provisions in the law fund government officials to conduct intrusive physical examinations of children who arrive at the border without a parent or legal guardian, theoretically to search for gang-related tattoos and markings. Chillingly, one of the two provisions calls for such examinations of children while they are in government custody and without any restrictions on age, leaving tender age children vulnerable to state-sponsored physical abuse.

The law funds extreme vetting measures for people who step forward to sponsor a child who arrived in the United States unaccompanied (often the child’s parent or other close relative) and all household members of that potential sponsor. Such intrusive measures without any guardrails against information sharing for enforcement purposes have proven to chill sponsors’ willingness to come forward for fear of detention and deportation, leaving children to languish in government custody.

Another measure allows government officials to coerce children who arrive at the border to accept rapid deportation back to the country they fled – without a day in court or any opportunity to speak to a lawyer. This measure could be used for children of any age, putting the new law directly at odds with long-standing legal protections that provide at least some additional due process for children who may be unable to articulate the trafficking or abuse they have fled.

$13.5 billion for state and local enforcement of federal immigration law:

The bill provides two separate funds totaling $13.5 billion for states and localities to seek reimbursement for a vast array of expenses that amount to the direct enforcement of federal immigration laws, including border wall construction and arrests of people suspected of immigration law violations. Empowering state and local officials to enforce immigration laws undermines civil rights and puts lives at risk. Nowhere is this as clearly on display as “Alligator Alcatraz,” the hastily built tent camp Florida officials designed to detain and terrorize immigrants without any involvement of the federal government.

$1 billion to divert military resources toward immigration and border enforcement:

The law provides $1 billion to divert military resources towards border militarization, including activities involving the possible detention of immigrants, a provision raising concerns that the administration will engage in violations of the Posse Comitatus Act by engaging the military in civilian law enforcement.

3.3 billion to the Department of Justice, largely to prosecute immigrants for status offenses:

The law provides $3.3 billion to the Department of Justice, immediately available through September 30, 2029. Many of these funds will be used to ramp up criminal prosecutions of people for immigration related offenses including unauthorized entry and failure to register through the Trump administration’s new registry trap. The federal criminal offenses of unauthorized entry and reentry served as the basis for the first Trump administration’s family separation policy known as “zero tolerance.” Increased prosecutions of migration-related offenses will inevitably undermine due process and asylum rights and separate families, recalling the zero tolerance horrors.

This section of the law also includes funding for the hiring of immigration judges, but the law provides a cap on the number of total judges at 800, limiting the additional possible hires to 100 (there are already 700 immigration judges throughout the country).

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[1] Url: https://www.nilc.org/resources/the-anti-immigrant-policies-in-trumps-final-big-beautiful-bill-explained/

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