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How much did DHS spend in Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles?

(NewsNation) — The cost to send federal immigration agents and officers to “sanctuary cities” is hard to pin down, and ranges from $18 million a week in Minneapolis to $59 million over two months in Chicago.

And it all depends on who you ask.

More than $409 billion in federal funding was devoted to immigration enforcement over more than two decades since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created, but the amount first calculated by the American Immigration Council in 2024 has jumped by hundreds of millions since President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration began last year.

Accurately calculating the cost of surging federal immigration officers and agents to urban areas like Los Angeles, Chicago and most recently, Minneapolis, is not an exact science.

Elected officials, nonprofit organizations and media outlets are left to create mathematical formulas based on government costs for agent compensation, lodging and food to predict how much American taxpayers are paying for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to move agents and officers into cities to carry out the Trump administration’s mass deportation mission.

This comes as lawmakers are at an impasse over funding the department as Democrats demand ICE and CBP reforms.

Adding to the mathematical difficulty is a lack of transparency from DHS, Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, told NewsNation. While the federal agency has a budgeted amount in place, the creation of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” infused $170 billion into the agency’s coffers, giving DHS what Gupta equates to a “slush fund” to pull from.

The mega-funding bill ear-marked $30 billion for immigration enforcement and another $45 billion for detention in ICE facilities over the next three years. But in addition to the DHS funding that covers government per diems for operational funding, Gupta said the bill also allows the agency to operate behind a wall of secrecy.

“(DHS officials) are just pulling dollars from (that bill) as they do these surges, and we can’t really know exactly how much is actually going into (these operations),” she added.

NewsNation reached out multiple times to DHS about costs in all three cities but has not heard back. Last year, in response to questions about costs in Chicago, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin blamed Illinois’ “sanctuary” leaders for “providing a safe haven for the world’s criminal illegal aliens in Chicago on the taxpayer’s dime.”

Feds spent an estimated $18M per week on Minneapolis surge: Analysis

DHS’s most recent immigration enforcement operation ended last week, when White House border czar Tom Homan announced that an “unprecedented level of coordination” between federal immigration agencies and Minnesota state and local officials prompted his recommendation to Trump that the surge end.

The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents resulted in angry protests from demonstrators demanding accountability. Good and Pretti’s death led to DHS shifting its enforcement strategies as Homan replaced former Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino as the face of the operation.

A cost analysis by the non-partisan nonprofit North Star Policy reported “Operation Metro Surge” in the Twin Cities cost an estimated $18 million a day. The agency calculated expenses like salaries ($9 million), lodging and meals based on per diems for government employees ($4.5 million per week) and migrant detention ($1.6 million per week), along with other costs, to come up with the “very conservative” figure.

Aaron Rosenthal, the organization’s research director, said that information that could not be accounted for, including car rentals for DHS personnel, helicopters used by DHS during the operation and the cost of tear gas and pepper balls used by agents were not added into the cost analysis. Rosenthal acknowledged North Star did not reach out to DHS for information when calculating its report.

He said a “consistent lack of DHS transparency” that he characterized as “not normal” was the biggest challenge of putting out estimates in real time, and accurately calculating costs became even more difficult.

“We have seen many instances in which I feel like DHS has been a particularly difficult organization to understand where money is going,” Rosenthal told NewsNation. “And I think this analysis is another example of how complicated it can be to track their spending.”

In sub-zero temperatures, marchers in downtown Minneapolis, Minn., waved signs decrying ongoing immigration enforcement operations in the Twin Cities metro area, Operation Metro Surge. (Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)

How DHS operational costs compare to other Minnesota expenditures

Rosenthal said that North Star Policy has not yet compiled a final tally for the operation, predicting that unforeseen costs will continue to be added. However, he said, by comparison, the $18 million in weekly costs is the same amount that the state spent on providing Medicaid to the state’s 1.17 million enrollees in 2025.

The $4.5 million spent weekly on meals for federal agents mirrors the amount needed to provide free breakfasts and lunches to the state’s school students.

In addition, Minneapolis officials estimate “Operation Metro Surge” resulted in a $203 million hit to the city’s local economy.

That cost is something that Rosenthal believes Minnesota taxpayers deserve answers on.

“There’s no question that the American people deserve a full accounting of what this operation has done and what the, if any, benefits have been,” he told NewsNation. “And that should really be used to inform what immigration policy looks like moving forward.”

At least $59 million spent on Chicago’s immigration surge: Report

DHS also spent tens of millions in going after what it considers “the worst of the worst” over two months in Chicago last fall, coming at a cost of at least $59 million, an analysis conducted by the Chicago Tribune found.

That surge, which began in October, led to more than 3,500 arrests, sparked outrage from elected officials and local communities where Bovino’s Border Patrol agents deployed tear gas and other non-lethal munitions on protesters before “Operation Midway Blitz” ended in early December.

The newspaper’s analysis found that the highest costs came from sending migrants to ICE detention centers, at an estimated $30.96 million.

Because of local laws, detainees who were processed at the Broadview ICE facility had to be sent to neighboring states to be detained for longer periods of time.

Military personnel in uniform, with the Texas National Guard patch on, are seen at the U.S. Army Reserve Center, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

More than $19 million was spent on deploying the National Guard, the Tribune reported. Two-hundred National Guard troops were deployed from Texas and housed in the Chicago suburbs.

In a letter to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) estimated that between June and December 2025, about $496 million was spent on deploying National Guard troops to U.S. cities. Merkley estimated that about $21 million was spent to send National Guardsmen from Texas and Chicago and keep them housed in the suburbs.

The report estimated that in Chicago, a daily average of $553 per National Guard member was spent on the deployment.

Merkley wrote in a January letter to the CBO that pinning a dollar amount on immigration enforcement operations using the National Guard is “difficult to predict accurately” based on several factors. The senator did not respond to an interview request from NewsNation.

Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, noted that a lack of transparency is intentional, meant to “pull the wool over the eyes of the American people.”

She said because DHS contracts with private companies for new detention facilities and purchases surveillance technology for use in operations, its expenses are difficult to impossible to track in real time.

“It’s part of the lack of transparency that has unfortunately characterized DHS immigration enforcement for decades,” Gupta told NewsNation. “The agency has been permitted to use national security and public safety as catch-alls for publicly reporting exactly how dollars are being spent.”

LA enforcement surge racked up nearly $120M, Newsom’s office estimates

Los Angeles became the first major urban flashpoint for federal immigration enforcement in June 2025, when Trump deployed 4,200 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to the city.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) office said the surge cost the state’s taxpayers nearly $120 million. Newsom’s office estimates that taxpayers were tasked with covering the costs of $37 million in payroll, more than $4 million in logistics supplies, $3.5 million in travel and $1.5 million in demobilization costs. 

Merkley came up with a higher figure for the National Guard deployment to Los Angeles, including a figure of $193 million in his report to the CBO.

Anti-ICE protesters clash with police near the Federal Building and detention center in Los Angeles, California on June 9, 2025, amid protests over immigration raids. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Officials from Newsom’s office requested all documents and data from the immigration enforcement operation through a Freedom of Information Act request. But after the federal government failed to respond to the request, the National Guard was asked to calculate estimated costs at the governor’s request.

“Let us not forget what this political theater is costing us all — millions of taxpayer dollars down the drain, an atrophy to the readiness of guardsmembers across the nation and unnecessary hardships to the families supporting those troops,” Newsom said in an issued statement in September.

He added, “Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. We ask other states to do the math themselves.”

The cost estimate compiled by the governor’s office did not take into consideration expenses for Border Patrol agents and ICE officers sent to Southern California during the deployment. A Newsom spokesperson did not return messages seeking comment from NewsNation.

DHS officials announced in December that since the Los Angeles enforcement operation began last June, more than 10,000 migrants have been arrested by federal agents. McLaughlin, who is expected to step down from the department next week, said the apprehensions — about 3,000 of which were made during the summer enforcement operation in Los Angeles — took place despite violent riots and opposition from Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D).

Both elected officials “failed the people of California,” McLaughlin said in a statement issued by the agency at the time.

The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors recently reported that the region incurred more than $1 billion in economic damage due to the summer enforcement effort.

The report also found that the city incurred $19.7 million in costs, nearly $17 million of which were felt by the Los Angeles Police Department to cope with protests associated with the federal deployment. Another $1.4 million went to pay for damage (including graffiti) done to city buildings, infrastructure and equipment.

Tens of millions spent on deportations to expand DHS enforcement costs

In addition to rising detention costs, of which $45 billion was allotted in the 2025 Trump funding bill, The Associated Press reported last week that the administration spent at least $40 million to deport 300 migrants to countries other than their own.

As part of those totals, lump sum payments were made, ranging between $4.7 million and $7.5 million to five countries — Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau — to deport migrants to those nations.

In announcing the ending of the Minneapolis enforcement operation last week, Homan announced that normal ICE field operations would continue as part of the ongoing presence of federal immigration officers. DHS officials shared a similar message in Chicago when that operation was halted, with Bovino telling reporters that federal agents “will be here for years.”

ICE did not immediately respond to NewsNation’s requests for staffing levels for its field offices in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Chicago, or about the costs to run those centers. As enforcement operations scale back significantly before the Trump administration turns its attention to another potential target, Homan said that the mission of federal immigration agents will continue.

“For those who say that we’re backing down from immigration enforcement or the promise of mass deportations, you are simply wrong,” he recently told reporters in Minneapolis. “President Trump made a promise of mass deportations and that’s what this country is going to get.”

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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