(The Center Square) – The House Judiciary Committee’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal is still a work in progress, but the first markup already reveals potentially major changes to the immigration system and regulatory law.
Under the $5.8 trillion Republican budget instructions, the House Judiciary Committee may spend at least $110 billion to fund priorities of President Donald Trump that fall under its jurisdiction. The committee handles issues related to federal court procedures, immigration and drug policy, antitrust issues, and crime control, among other things.
The committee’s resolution in its current form, which lawmakers debated in a roughly nine-hour markup Wednesday, would increase the federal deficit by an estimated $81 billion over the next decade, well within the instructions of the budget resolution.
More than half of the money, $45 billion, is allotted to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for building facilities that could detain at least 100,000 illegal immigrants. The bill also directs $8 billion for hiring more border personnel and $500 million to the Department of Justice to combat drug trafficking.
Notably, the Judiciary committee’s plan imposes fees for the first time ever on asylum applications. Asylum seekers and parolees would pay a $1,000 minimum fee, while migrants requesting Temporary Protected Status would have to pay $500. Sponsors of unaccompanied migrant children would be charged $3,500, and many work permits applications would also carry a $550 fee.
Altogether, the investments in border security coupled with the new fees will raise tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue over the next decade if applied.
“This system has left these agencies with funding shortfalls paid for by American taxpayers,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told lawmakers. “The fees included in this bill will allow agencies to achieve cost recovery and limit their reliance on taxpayer funding.”
Democratic members of the committee blasted the budget blueprint as a “blank check” for Trump’s “authoritarian playbook.”
Another major change made by the plan — which passed the committee on a party-line vote but is still subject to edits — relates to how the executive branch can implement regulatory actions. The bill would require agencies to account for the costs of any proposed rules and also require congressional approval for any major rules that would increase federal revenue.
Republicans have said this will rein in the power of the unelected administrative state and force lawmakers to write better, more detailed laws instead of assuming regulatory agencies will take care of the specifics.
