Writing

Apportioned, Obligated, and Unaccounted For: Tracing ICE's $45 Billion of Detention Funding

OMB and Treasury records show that ICE's detention-facility expansion is already far larger and more advanced than public reporting has documented.

May 14, 2026

Answerable to No One but the President: Congress’s Abdication on ICE

Congress is about to fund an entire federal agency outside the annual appropriations process and without the bipartisan safeguards that have constrained ICE.

May 11, 2026

How Have ICE and CBP Used Their $140 Billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill?

A new analysis of how ICE and CBP used their OBBA appropriations in 2025, and why the public still cannot track the agencies' remaining balance during the current DHS shutdown.

Apr 16, 2026

How Has Funding for Federal Agencies Changed Over the Last Decade?

The annual appropriations topline has become an increasingly unreliable guide to agency funding. A new dataset combining annual and non-annual appropriations reveals trillions in spending outside the traditional process.

Mar 1, 2026

ICE and CBP Spending under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

How OBBA appropriated $170 billion to immigration enforcement and where the money is going.

Feb 2, 2026

Budget Process Innovation in the 117th Congress, Part 2: Directed Scorekeeping and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

How a bipartisan Senate coalition used directed scorekeeping to pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act's major spending provisions.

Feb 14, 2023