ICE has been granted a $160 billion budget, higher than that allocated for the marines

Question

According to author Don Winslow, ICE’s new budget exceeds that of the Marine’s, following the passage of Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’.

Answer 1

This claim is false. ICE’s current annual budget is around $10 billion. According to Snopes, "The agency plans to spend $10.4 billion in budget year 2025 — which runs from Oct. 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2025 — according to a budget overview document." Regarding Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed by the Senate on July 3, 2025, "the agency would receive an infusion of more than $100 billion through 2029: $45 billion for detention facilities, $46 billion for border wall operations in the U.S.-Mexico border and $14 billion for deportation operations" (TIME). Compared to the U.S. Marines, Stars and Stripes reported "the service’s $53.7 billion budget request is part of the Navy’s $257 billion overall proposed spending plan for fiscal 2025, which [began] Oct. 1." 

Answer 2

The claim “ICE has been granted a $160 billion budget, higher than that allocated for the Marines” is false. In the summer of 2025, a rumor circulated that U.S. lawmakers would allocate a $160 billion budget to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, according to Snopes (snopes), a trusted fact-checking website, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement was given a budget of $75 billion. Although Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not receive a $160 billion budget, $75 billion is a significantly larger budget than what the U.S. Marines received; however, the U.S. Marines received a total annual budget of $57.26 billion. The annual amount of ICE’s budget was left unclear, with only a large budget that will run through September 2029 ($75 billion). In conclusion, ICE has not been budgeted 160 billion dollars, and appears not to have received a higher budget than the U.S. Marines.

Deng, Rae. “Unpacking Claims Trump Admin Budgeted More Money for ICE than US Marine Corps.” Snopes, Snopes.com, 8 July 2025, www.snopes.com/news/2025/07/08/trump-ice-budget-marines/.