Immigrants, both legal and not, will be paying for the Big Beautiful Bill

“The newly minted law will fund many of Trump’s domestic policies, including his immigration crackdown, resulting in nearly $170 billion to support the administration’s border goals. The final bill, as detailed by NPR, allocates $45 billion for immigration detention centers, around $30 billion to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel, for transportation costs, and to maintain ICE facilities. Additionally, roughly $46.5 billion has been earmarked to complete Trump’s border wall—a campaign promise he’s been repeating for nearly a decade—and includes $5 billion for Customs and Border Protection facilities and $10 billion for other border security initiatives. Approximately $13.5 billion will be set aside to reimburse states and local governments for their assistance with immigration and border-related enforcement. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cleared the Senate and House in an expedited push marked by intra-party fighting, includes several provisions aimed at taking additional money out of immigrant pockets, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. Through cuts to benefits and added or increased fees, immigrants, both documented and not, will be paying a sizable amount of the cost to fund the president’s agenda. Details of the legislation include not allowing children who are US citizens and have parents without legal status to be eligible for the child tax credit—an annual financial break for families to help defray the cost of raising children. The move is estimated to make 2.6 million children ineligible for the $2,200 credit. Young immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will also no longer be eligible for subsidies through the Affordable Care Act. Several other groups of immigrants, including visa holders, will now be prohibited from buying insurance through the ACA. Those seeking asylum in the US will also now be subject to a $100 application fee, starting in fiscal year 2025. The administration’s decision to impose this new financial hurdle makes the US one of the few countries that charge a price for seeking humanitarian protection. That’s not the only additional fee added to asylum seekers; as the WSJ notes, this group will also be required to pay $100 for each year they wait in an asylum backlog, $550 each year to renew a work permit, and should asylum seekers want to appeal a denial, they will have to shell out $900 to have an appeals body review their claims. That same appeal, before the bill was passed, cost $110. “Separately, anyone issued a temporary visa, such as a tourist, student, or work visa, will be required to pay a new $ 250’ visa integrity fee’ in addition to existing fees for respective visa categories,” the WSJ’s Michelle Hackman and Jack Gillum write. “Many of these fees,” they continue, “are written as minimums, meaning Trump or any future administration could jack them up even higher.”