The American Immigration Council is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a contract for $16.7 million to buy 6,000 pairs of electric shock gloves for officers. The gloves apply a painful electric shock directly to the skin of someone the officer is already holding; in the notice published by ICE, they are called, euphemistically, “distraction and de-escalation devices.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is responsible for sending ICE the money the agency is using to buy shock gloves — part of a combined $239.5 billion that Congress has handed to ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in a pair of massive no-strings-attached funding bills.
Collins has told reporters that she doesn’t agree with the way ICE is spending the money she sent them. She claimed that she got the agency to agree to spend $2 million on “deescalation” — which she apparently envisioned as training officers on how not to hurt people, rather than giving them gloves to hurt people more efficiently. But nothing in the text of the bill her committee passed actually made that a requirement. No matter how Collins may feel about ICE’s choices, she has steadfastly refused to do anything in her power, as the head of the relevant committee, to stop the agency from making them.
Over and over, this Congress has proved itself incapable of exercising any restraint or even basic accountability over ICE and the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Its legacy has been to shovel unfathomable amounts of money at immigration enforcement – with predictably abusive results.
This Congress gave immigration enforcement a blank check
Twice, in 2025 (via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) and 2026, Congress used the reconciliation process to appropriate a combined $239.5 billion to ICE and CBP. By using reconciliation, leadership in both chambers was able to pass the bills by a simple majority (rather than the Senate needing to meet a 60-vote threshold to pass a cloture vote, as is usually the case with appropriations or other legislation). With no need for bipartisan negotiations, Congress gave President Trump and his administration much of what it asked for — as a more-or-less blank check.
Unsurprisingly, ICE is now acting with no restraints — budgetary, legal, or moral.
ICE has adopted policies that contradict years of constitutional and statutory interpretation, such as claiming that suspected unauthorized immigrants have no Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. When its agents have killed people on the street for standing up for their immigrant neighbors, the Trump Department of Justice has not only failed to prosecute them itself but has frequently refused to cooperate with state and local criminal investigations. Whether or not every member of Congress who voted for reconciliation is happy about these outcomes, they have failed to prevent them and are failing now to hold the administration accountable.
When Susan Collins, for example, is pressed about the abuses ICE has engaged in with the money she sent them, she likes to tout the $2 million for de-escalation and a $20 million earmark in a funding bill from earlier this year to buy body cameras for immigration agents. But ICE has now released its policy over when to make bodycam footage public — and it says it will only do so when it’s in the agency’s own “best interest.” In other words, the body camera appropriation will most likely only be used to produce administration propaganda rather than holding officers accountable for what they do in the field.
How the next Congress can rein in ICE
Congress could be doing more — which means that the next Congress, the one set to be elected in November’s midterm elections, can also do more. Congressional leaders could be the only meaningful alternative to the diminished influence of the courts in providing a check on the Trump administration’s abuses when it comes to immigration enforcement and the management of our legal immigration system.
Without a majority of members in both chambers willing to keep writing blank checks to the Trump administration, Congress will be unable to use the reconciliation process to throw even more money at ICE and CBP. However, even without additional funds, the funding bonanza of the last two years could still be enough to keep both agencies running a mass-deportation operation through Trump’s term. But if enough members of the new Congress feel that the money already appropriated for Trump’s deportation machine is too much, they have the power to implement restrictions on how funding is used or theoretically “claw back” any funds still unallocated from the 2025 and 2026 bills — although whether the leadership of the next Congress would be willing to take that step will probably depend on the election results themselves (and how they are interpreted).
The difference a new Congress could make, in other words, is the difference between continued expansion of mass-deportation operations and forcing the Trump administration to scale back its existing plans and working to hold executive branch officials accountable for some for the most horrific things we’ve witnessed in the nearly two years since Trump regained office.
Potential checks on funding
Congress can also attach requirements to any funds it appropriates. It can, for example, prohibit funds from being used to purchase additional enforcement and surveillance equipment intended for use in the field. It can insist that immigration agents adhere to higher legal standards and bar agents from being put into the field before background checks are even complete. It can prohibit the administration from enforcing its radical interpretations of the Constitution to deprive noncitizens of their Fourth Amendment and due process rights.
Of course, the Trump administration may be tempted to simply disregard Congress’ instructions about how money may be spent. However, the majority party in Congress has the power to conduct oversight of the executive branch. It could set up new special committees with additional staff to investigate past and present abuses, and subpoena administration officials to testify under oath. A Congress that cared about oversight could, for example, subpoena officials at both ICE and DOJ for an investigation into the agencies’ responses to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last winter, and the killings of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine this summer.
Potential legislative solutions from the next Congress
In theory, of course, Congress could also pass legislation to fix the underlying problems with the system that have forced so many communities into constant fear of deportation. That is unlikely to happen under this president — the second Trump administration has shown even less willingness to negotiate with Congress than the first one did, and it is unlikely that an opposition party would get veto-proof supermajorities in both houses.
However, if an opposition party controls even one chamber of Congress, it has the power to bring bills to the floor that advance an alternative vision on immigration — making it clear to the American public that there are solutions to repair the current immigration system that don’t require letting ICE run amok in their communities. The American Dream and Promise Act, for example — a bill which would offer permanent status to people who have lost TPS or are in danger of losing DACA — is currently the subject of a discharge petition in the House of Representatives, because current House leadership refuses to bring it to the floor despite bipartisan support. If leadership changes, bills like the American Dream and Promise Act can actually be debated on the floor of Congress.
Additionally, under divided government, it will be harder for Congress to pass laws that further curtail immigrants’ rights — such as H.R. 2, which would (among many other things) mandate long-term detention of immigrant families and put any adult relative of an unaccompanied child into deportation proceedings. Congressional Republicans have been split over some provisions of the bill, and it is unlikely to come to the floor this year — but with a bigger majority (or even just a more unified one), it could be reintroduced and brought to the floor in the next Congress.
This Congress has all but abdicated its authority to keep the executive branch in check. But if the next Congress is made up of people who take that duty more seriously, both immigrant communities and the American system of government will be far better off.
