They Already Got The Money (Analysis)

ICE and CBP received $140 billion last year. They spent 11% of it. Senate Republicans want to give them more — and nobody can see where the rest went.

WASHINGTON — There is a man named Kevin McNellis. He is not famous. He does not go on television. He sits down with federal spending databases the way a mechanic sits down with an engine that won’t start — patient, methodical, looking for what doesn’t add up.

What he found last week should have stopped the United States Senate cold.

So far, it has not.

McNellis pulled the numbers on how ICE and the Border Patrol spent the $139.7 billion Congress handed them last year through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That was not a typo. One hundred and thirty-nine point seven billion dollars. More than four times what those two agencies had ever seen in a single budget year in their combined history.

How much of it did they actually spend?

Eleven percent.