City Budgets and Policing

An NPR data analysis released March 24, 2026, concludes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployments under President Trump’s "Operation Metro Surge" created significant financial and operational strain for major U.S. cities, even in jurisdictions that legally refuse to assist federal immigration enforcement. In Los Angeles, where ICE sweeps in early June 2025 triggered weeks of protests, LAPD overtime spending jumped to $41 million for the month—compared with a typical range of $18–$30 million—with about $17 million spent between June 8 and 16 alone and roughly $12 million of that for overtime tied to protest response and security around federal facilities. Minneapolis recorded more than $6 million in police overtime and standby pay from Jan. 7 to Feb. 8, more than double its entire annual overtime budget of $2.3 million, as officers were diverted to demonstrations, facility protection and emergency calls linked to the ICE surge, while in Portland, Oregon, city officials say the same pattern of redeployments contributed to slower response times on regular 911 calls. Los Angeles City Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez said the city was "balancing and teetering on martial law" during the height of the raids and protests, warning that the figures don’t yet account for likely lawsuit and liability costs from injuries and aggressive policing. The White House defended the crackdown in a statement citing disputed multi‑billion‑dollar estimates of the fiscal cost of unauthorized immigrants, which NPR notes it has not independently verified, underscoring the widening gap between federal political justifications and the local fiscal realities of Trump’s immigration enforcement strategy.