WASHINGTON – Ranking Member of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ranking Member of Senate Armed Services Committee Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Ranking Member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), and Ranking Member of House Armed Services Committee Adam Smith (D-Wash.) sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging him to stop diverting military funds to support immigration enforcement operations usually handled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The letter raises concerns about the Department of Defense’s (DOD) recent request to transfer funds from the Navy’s Working Capital Fund to cover non-reimbursable support for DHS’s immigration enforcement and removal operations. The proposed diversion is part of a DOD pattern of diverting funds to DHS-related efforts in ways that could weaken military readiness and make the United States less prepared to fight the wars of tomorrow.
“Since January 2025, DOD has chosen to provide more than $838 million in non-reimbursable DOD support to DHS. Those transfers come at a cost; a dollar spent on immigration enforcement is a dollar unavailable to prepare and equip our troops,” the lawmakers wrote.
The lawmakers highlighted that President Donald Trump’s recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes $1 billion for DOD and more than $170 billion for DHS, making the additional funding of immigration enforcement unnecessary.
“With the funds now available to DHS, there is no need to continue non-reimbursable support to DHS, and the work of domestic immigration enforcement can and must be returned to DHS. Deploying military personnel for these tasks does not build lethality and risks politicizing those forces,” the lawmakers wrote.
They conclude by urging DOD leadership to focus on the department’s core mission of military readiness and supporting our men and women in uniform.
You can read the full letter here.