The governor reached for the biggest number he had to warn a non-voter his ballot mattered. By the time the tape aired, Congress had already moved past it — and the comparison underneath it never held up in the first place.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
On a soundstage in California, taped weeks before it ever reached a Maryland screen, Governor Wes Moore sat across from a young non-voter and reached for the biggest number available to him. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Moore told him, had grown from $10 billion to $85 billion — “bigger than the FBI,” “bigger than the ATF,” bigger, he said, “than the State of Maryland.” The line was built to land as a closing argument: look what one election cost you.
It didn’t land. “I don’t think so,” the man told him. “I don’t believe so. No.”
The number underneath the pitch didn’t hold up much better than the pitch did.
What’s Actually True
Start with the part that checks out, because there’s real substance here. ICE’s typical annual appropriation runs about $10 billion. Last year’s reconciliation package — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — layered $75 billion in supplemental funding on top of that base, an infusion that made ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in the country and financed a hiring surge that roughly doubled the agency’s ranks. The Brennan Center estimated that combination gave ICE about $28.7 billion at its disposal in fiscal 2025 alone — and Congress doesn’t require the agency to spend reconciliation funds evenly year to year, so the run rate can vary. Either way, it’s comfortably ahead of the FBI’s FY2026 request of $10.1 billion and the roughly $1.2 billion proposed for the ATF. On a fair annual basis, Moore’s underlying point — that ICE now outspends the FBI and ATF — is correct.
The Number Was Already Stale
The tape’s own math expired before the tape aired.
What isn’t correct is the figure he chose to make that point. By the time “Surrounded” published to Jubilee’s YouTube channel on July 5, Congress had already moved past it. In mid-June, the House and Senate passed — and the president signed — the Secure America Act, directing roughly $70 billion more to ICE and Customs and Border Protection, with close to $39 billion of it earmarked for ICE specifically through 2029. Layered on top of the money ICE was already carrying from the prior year’s reconciliation bill, the agency’s available multi-year funding now runs well past $110 billion — before Congress’s regular federal fiscal 2027 appropriations process, which begins this October, adds anything further. Moore’s “$85 billion” wasn’t an exaggeration so much as an outdated one. The tape’s own math expired before the tape aired.
Comparing a Decade to a Year
It’s comparing a single year’s grocery bill to four years of mortgage payments and treating it as a scandal that the mortgage is bigger.
The larger flaw in the line is structural, not just stale — and it turns out to infect the correction as much as the original claim. Maryland’s operating budget is set annually, on a fiscal year running July 1 to June 30. The $67.3 billion figure both Moore and his critics have used is the state’s fiscal 2026 budget — the one that expired June 30. Maryland’s actual current budget, signed by Moore on April 8 and in effect since July 1, is $70.8 billion for fiscal 2027. Whichever number gets used, it’s an annual figure, appropriated and spent inside a single fiscal year. ICE’s $85 billion, like the $75 billion before it and the roughly $39 billion layered on since, is a multi-year appropriation Congress deliberately extended through 2029 so the agency wouldn’t have to seek funding annually. Measuring either one against ICE’s multi-year total isn’t a rounding error. It’s comparing a single year’s grocery bill to four years of mortgage payments and treating it as a scandal that the mortgage is bigger.
That distinction didn’t require special expertise to catch — only reading past the headline number Moore delivered on camera. It’s the same standard MDBayNews applies regardless of party: a governor who measured his state’s one-year budget against a federal agency’s four-year appropriation, and left the comparison uncorrected, would get this treatment whether he sat in Annapolis or anywhere else. And a fact-check that repeats the same stale annual figure while missing the category error entirely isn’t really a correction.
What the Camera Actually Caught
Strip the number away, and what’s left on tape is a governor who reached for the largest figure he had, delivered it as the reason a non-voter’s ballot mattered, and watched it do nothing. That may be the more telling story here. Even with every advantage — a sympathetic format, a scripted-feeling setup, and a budget figure that (however unintentionally) undersold his own case — the argument didn’t move the person it was aimed at. For a governor whose travel schedule and national media appearances have increasingly read like an audition, a scare tactic that doesn’t scare anyone is a data point of its own.
Sourcing: Jubilee Media, “Governor Wes Moore vs. 20 Non-Voters | Surrounded,” published July 5, 2026; NPR, “How a $75 billion windfall from Congress has insulated ICE,” April 13, 2026; NPR, “Trump signs immigration bill with billions for ICE,” June 9, 2026; Congressional Budget Office, cost estimate for Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs / Judiciary reconciliation recommendations, May 4, 2026; Brennan Center for Justice, “ICE and Customs and Border Protection Budgets to Exceed $200 Billion,” June 2026; Federal Bureau of Investigation, FY2026 budget request testimony to House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees, May 2025; Federal News Network, House Appropriations Committee FY2026 funding levels for FBI and ATF, July 2025; Office of Governor Wes Moore, “Governor Moore, Legislative Leaders Sign $70.8 Billion Budget Into Law,” April 8, 2026; Maryland Matters and CBS Baltimore coverage of the FY2027 budget signing, April 8–9, 2026.
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