The Trump Administration has siphoned off at least $2 billion from the Pentagon budget for anti-immigration measures, with plans to more than double that number in the coming fiscal year, according to a report released Thursday by Democratic lawmakers.
The report, titled “Draining Defense,” took aim at the Trump administration for what it described as prioritizing hard-line border initiatives and political stunts at the expense of the military’s ability to protect the nation and respond to emergencies.
“It’s an insult to our service members that Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem are using the defense budget as a slush fund for political stunts. Stripping military resources to promote a wasteful political agenda doesn’t make our military stronger or Americans safer,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the lawmakers who prepared the report, told The Intercept. “Congress needs to step in and hold the Trump Administration accountable for mishandling billions of taxpayer dollars.”
The report noted that the Pentagon’s requested budget for 2026 indicates that the Defense Department plans to spend at least $5 billion for operations on the southern border alone.
President Donald Trump has made a crackdown on immigration and closed borders the key policy of his second term, and has argued that decreasing immigration and deporting immigrants is a cornerstone of sovereignty and safety. But the lawmakers argued that the level of commitment of Pentagon funds and troops on immigration matters has passed any reasonable standard, hampering the overall readiness of the nation’s armed forces and contributing to wasteful spending in lieu of more efficient allocation of resources by civilian agencies.
“When the military is tasked with immigration enforcement — a role that is not consistent with DoD’s mission, and that servicemembers have neither signed up nor been trained for — those operations often cost several times more than when the same function is performed by civilian authorities,” the lawmakers wrote.
The report found that the Pentagon had allocated at least $1.3 billion for resources and troop deployment to the border; at least $420.9 million for the detention of immigrants at military installations at home and abroad; at least $258 million for the deployment of troops American cities like Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago; and at least $40.3 million for military deportation flights.
“As of July 2025, there were roughly 8,500 troops deployed to the southern border, with additional combat units in the process of relieving the troops who were deployed to the border earlier in the year,” the lawmakers wrote. “This deployment has meant making combat-certified units no longer available for their normal functions because they are assisting DHS with immigration enforcement — raising serious concerns about the implications for military readiness.”
The report also singled out the cost of Trump’s deployments to U.S. cities over the past year and cited reporting by The Intercept on the steep cost of those deployments.
The lawmakers also raised concerns that, in addition to the financial costs, the Pentagon’s focus on anti-immigration policies has resulted in military service members “being pulled from their homes, families, and civilian jobs for indefinite periods of time to support legally questionable political stunts.”
They criticized the administration’s failure to adequately inform Congress and the public about the diversion of Pentagon funds. “The Trump administration’s secrecy leaves many questions unanswered,” they wrote. “The administration has failed to provide clarity on basic questions about DoD’s role in supporting DHS.”
The White House responded that “spending allocated money on one mission does not mean other missions become depleted,” and said the use of Pentagon funds on immigration matters should be blamed on political adversaries.
“Operations with the Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t be necessary if Joe Biden didn’t turn the Southern Border into a national security threat, but this administration is proud to fix the problem Democrats started,” said Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson in an emailed statement.
