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CBP Chief Rodney Scott (left), Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons (middle) and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow (right) testify at budget hearing.
Jamie Gareh/Medill News Service)
ICE Director Requests Additional $5.4 Billion at Congressional Budget Hearing
Apr 24, 2026
WASHINGTON- The acting director of ICE on Thursday told Congress that while the Trump administration pumped $75 billion extra into ICE over four years, many activities remain cash starved and the agency needs about $5.4 billion in additional funding for 2027.
There’s misinformation with the Big Beautiful Bill that ICE is fully funded,” said Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, whose resignation was announced later that day.
He added that the recent influx of money funds adequately funds detaining and deporting immigrants. But everything from “putting gas in the vehicles” to special unit investigation teams remained underfunded. He cited growing needs, in particular, to fund their intelligence network and victim specialist teams.
“We just don’t have that [money],” he said.
With the passing of the One Big Beautiful Bill in July 2025, ICE had already become the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S.. The administration’s request for even more money came amid intense and continuing controversy over agents’ tactics, which have caused mass protests across the country.
“They [ICE] have been out of control,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., to Medill News as he walked through the tunnels of the U.S. Capitol. “They have acted grossly, illegally and unconstitutionally.”
Democrats at the hearing argued that funding for law enforcement agencies like ICE should not increase without significant reform and oversight. These same demands from Democrats spurred a partial government shutdown that began in February - now the longest in U.S. history. The hearing, however, focused on next year’s funding.
Lyons argued that the agency needed more money to continue its efforts. He said that 451,000 people had been detained by ICE under the Trump administration. Including “281,000 with criminal histories, 8,400 gang members and 1,600 known and suspected terrorists,” he said.
Immigration advocacy groups and academic researchers challenged that data, finding that 71% of current ICE detainees have no criminal conviction.
Republicans at the hearing echoed Lyons, highlighting ICE’s role in national security, while some Democrats expressed their concerns about the prospect of additional funding. Among other things, Democrats pointed to the 44 detainees who have died in ICE custody during the Trump administration.
“That is a 20-year high for an agency that was only formed in 2003,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.
She spoke about ICE agents arresting US citizens without warrants, tear-gassing a family on their way home from a basketball game, sexual abuse in detention centers and one Cuban man who recently died while in detention due to excessive force. His death was ruled a homicide, according to an autopsy report.
“In January of this year, ICE violated nearly 100 federal court orders,” she said, “which the chief federal judge in the state of Minnesota estimated was more violations than some federal agencies have committed during their entire existence.”
Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., questioned the pattern of “reckless, incompetent, cruel, illegal, corrupt and unconstitutional behavior,” she has seen from ICE agents. “These are leadership problems, not funding problems,” she said, later declaring that she would not give the agency “another penny.”
Colleen Putzel, a spokesperson from the D.C. based think tank the Migration Policy Institute, expressed frustration with the potential of an increased ICE budget, describing what she sees as a “mismatch” in funding in the immigration system.
She explained that while the budget for immigration enforcement operations like ICE remains at “large and growing levels,” other immigration agencies, such as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, have seen drastic cuts.
For example, the office, which runs immigration courts, has seen a quarter of their immigration judges fired in the past year. This has helped create a back-log of 3.8 million cases.
Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., who held office during the height of Operation Midway Blitz at the end of last year, sees a country where family budgets decline while ICE budgets grow.
“It would be a travesty for taxpayers," she said to Medill News Service, and for many across the country asking “Why is my gas price so expensive? Why can’t I buy a home? Why is my life so hard?”
Jamie Gareh is a graduate student at Medill.
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The Illinois State Capitol Building, in Springfield, Illinois on MAY 05, 2012.
(Photo By Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Illinois House Passes Bill to Restrict Construction of Immigration Detention Centers in Communities
Apr 24, 2026
The Illinois House passed a legislative proposal in a 72-35 partisan vote that would restrict where immigration detention centers can be built, located or operated in the state.
House Bill 5024 would amend state code so that an immigration detention center cannot be located, constructed, or operated by the federal government within 1,500 feet of a home or apartment complex, as well as any school, day care center, public park, or house of worship. Current detention facilities in the state would not be affected by the legislation.
The bill was introduced by House Speaker Emmanuel 'Chris' Welch in response to what he described as federal actions involving the Broadview detention facility.
“This is not an abstract policy debate for me — this is personal, and it is deeply local. The Broadview detention facility sits in the heart of the district I represent. And during Operation Midway Blitz, the people who live in and around that community did not just witness aggressive federal activity — they lived through trauma,” Welch said in a press statement.
“This bill says something very simple and very reasonable: detention facilities do not belong in the middle of our neighborhoods. They should not be next to schools. They should not be near day care centers. They should not sit beside parks, public housing, places of worship, or private homes. Because when a detention center is dropped into the middle of a residential community, it doesn’t just affect the people inside that building — it affects every child walking to school, every senior looking out their window, and every family trying to live in peace,” he continued.
One of the most notable witnesses on the bill was Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson, who testified in March in support of the legislation.
Appearing via Zoom, Thompson voiced support for the measure, highlighting concerns about how Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity at the village’s detention center has impacted residents.
Those concerns follow Operation Midway Blitz, which began in September 2025 and led Gov. JB Pritzker to create the Illinois Accountability Commission in response to federal immigration enforcement actions.
“In Broadview, we have residents who live as close as 600 feet away from the ICE facility,” Thompson told committee members. “That is not a statistic; those are people, families, children, individuals whose daily lives are directly impacted by what happens around that facility.”
House Republicans voiced concerns about the legislation, including Rep. Patrick Windhorst, who said the bill reflects ongoing conflict between Illinois Democrats and the federal government.
“The result of this effort to not work together with the federal government to resolve the issues, particularly related to immigration and enforcement of our laws, has resulted in huge problems in our state that the majority party attempts to blame the current presidential administration for,” Windhorst said, according to WQAD 8.
“But we need to take a hard look at what we're doing as a state to make sure we're fulfilling our obligations to protect our citizens and to enforce the laws, including the federal laws of our country,” he continued.
In Illinois, privately owned detention centers have been banned since 2019, with the enactment of the Private Detention Facility Moratorium Act, which prohibits state and local government agencies from contracting with or paying private prison companies for detention purposes, including federal immigration detention.
The bill is currently in the Senate Assignments Committee. If passed and signed by Gov. Pritzker, it would take effect immediately.
Angeles Ponpa is the Managing Editor of Latino News Network Midwest, overseeing Illinois Latino News, Wisconsin Latino News, and Michigan Latino News. She is based in Illinois.
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Nearly 40% of Maryland newspapers question whether they will be able to operate without more funding within the next two years.
Adobe Stock
MD Bill To Support Local News Appears Unlikely To Pass This Session
Apr 24, 2026
As Maryland’s legislative session winds down, a bill in the General Assembly intended to support local newspapers across the state appears unlikely to pass.
The Local Newspapers for Maryland Communities Act would have required the state government to spend 50% of their print and digital advertising budget on local outlets in the state. The bill does not favor any particular news outlets, rather stipulating that organizations must produce original local content and have at least one reporter in or around Maryland.
Daniel Trielli, an assistant professor of media and democracy at the University of Maryland, said that type of support has been done in many communities.
"It might seem like a weird mechanism to support local news," he said, "but the reality is that this is a very traditional way that societies and communities have found, throughout history and throughout many countries, to support local news."
Maryland counties each have at least one newspaper, according to a 2025 report by the Northwestern University Local News Initiative. Nine Maryland counties, though, only have one news outlet covering their respective regions.
Trielli said the financial outlook for local newspapers across the state and country is dire. A 2024 report from the University of Maryland at College Park found nearly 40% of local publications in the state weren’t confident they could continue operating in two years without increased revenue.
"Often it is the case that local news is surviving by very little day by day," he said. "Just a little boost in their finances can make a real big difference in the survival of these news organizations."
Similar policies have been tried at the municipal level in major cities. New York City allocated more than $70 million over the first five years of its program.
MD Bill To Support Local News Appears Unlikely To Pass This Session was originally published by The Public News Service and is republished with permission.
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Expert witnesses testify on the issues facing federal benefits programs run by states at a House Government Operations hearing on Wednesday, April 15, 2026.
(Photo by Naisha Roy | Medill News Service)
House Bill Pushes Bipartisan Effort to Tackle Federal Benefits Fraud, Refocusing from Immigration
Apr 18, 2026
WASHINGTON — Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, introduced a bill Wednesday morning that would create a permanent U.S. Treasury Inspector General position for fraud accountability as part of a broader effort to crack down on the misuse of federal benefits.
The bill would offer an alternative, bipartisan way to prevent federal benefits fraud, after several months of politically charged congressional hearings.
The bill, titled the “Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act,” was introduced at a House Subcommittee on Government Operations hearing. This hearing follows larger, committee-wide hearings investigating the misuse of federal funds in Minnesota after a scandal involving Somali immigrants, which broke late last year. However, Sessions stressed that his bill addresses a nationwide problem that isn’t limited to immigration.
“While we are fresh off the heels of the full committee’s investigation and hearings into fraud, this isn’t about one state,” he said. “This is not about Minnesota, it is not about any one particular area.”
In 2025, the government estimated nearly $29 billion in improper Medicaid payments, but it was unclear how much of that was fraud rather than paperwork errors and administrative mistakes. For similar reasons, the government does not have clear estimates of fraud in other benefit programs.
But Rep. Emily Randall, D-W.A., worried that the crackdown on fraud could result in eligible people receiving delayed or missing benefits.
“I had a sister with really complex disabilities who relied on Washington State's Medicaid program, and I can think of a number of times where my mom didn't submit paperwork in time,” she said. “Maybe Olivia was in the hospital, or had any number of health complications that meant her stack of paperwork kept getting bigger and bigger. Those improper payments sometimes are just a struggling family trying to keep their kid or family member alive and healthy.”
Subcommittee member Rep. Eleanor Norton, D-D.C., criticized President Trump for contributing to the fraud problem by firing or demoting over 20 inspectors general since the beginning of his term.
“Inspectors general are a key part of detecting and preventing fraud,” she said.
The bill focused on the many issues plaguing Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families disbursements at the state level. For instance, states often do not share eligibility data across assistance programs or with the federal government. States also use outdated user interface systems to track eligibility.
To combat this, the bill would make the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee's operations a permanent part of the Treasury. The committee was created in 2020 to track how states were spending pandemic relief funds, but Sessions’ bill would expand its responsibilities to all federal awards over $50,000.
Sessions’ legislation marks a shift away from previous fraud accountability efforts focused on immigration. Last month, an executive order created a Task Force to Eliminate Fraud led by Vice President J.D. Vance. The order blamed many of the benefits issues on “lax immigration policy and immigration fraud.” Soon after, the House passed “Deporting Fraudsters Act,” which would make benefits fraud a deportable offense. While Sessions voted for the Deporting Fraudsters Act, he said his new bill would be a separate, preventive effort.
“What we're trying to do is to take the mechanisms of data and information and make them permanent,” Sessions said. “[The Deporting Fraudsters Act] deals with when you're caught, and you've committed fraud, that you can be deported.”
O.J. Oleka, a witness from the State Financial Officers Foundation, suggested an “instant verification system” that would cross-check applicants’ income, residency, and citizenship status before payments are issued. However, experts said this would not be feasible, at least for Medicaid, given the current distribution of those funds.
“It’s completely infeasible to implement,” Andy Schneider, a Georgetown professor who has written extensively on Medicaid policy, said in an interview. “The data systems are not in place, and the effect of a rule like that would be to disenfranchise millions of Americans from access to health insurance coverage.”
The bill would add the responsibility of negotiating data-sharing agreements with states to the Treasury Secretary’s role. However, this raised concerns about privacy, especially in the current political climate.
“When it comes to providing information to the federal government, in an ideal world, you would want sharing of information to make systems flow better,” said Valerie Lacarte, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, in an interview.
Non-citizens do not qualify for many benefits, and those who do use benefits do so at lower rates than citizens. Unfortunately, she said, many immigrants fear that if they provide their personal information to states, the federal government will use that information for immigration enforcement.
“Because of the use of federal agencies basically using information from different agencies for the purposes of immigration enforcement, that is now putting a lot of states and local governments in an awkward position with their communities,” she said.
Naisha Roy is a graduate journalism student at Northwestern University reporting on the immigration beat on Capitol Hill.
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