# Office of the Principal Legal Advisor

**Agency:** Homeland Security  
**Account:** Operations and Support  
**Source document:** Immigration and Customs Enforcement · p. 5  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/budget/homeland-security/office-of-the-principal-legal-advisor  

> **Trust:** parsed from the agency Congressional Justification. Approximate, **not summable**, verify at the cited page.

## Funding ($M)

| Fiscal year | Basis | Amount |
| --- | --- | --- |
| FY2025 | enacted | 441.5 |
| FY2026 | CR annualized | 441.5 |
| FY2027 | request | 468.8 |

The prior-year column is a CR annualized figure, not an enacted appropriation.


## Homeland Security discretionary budget authority (OMB PBDB — authoritative)

FY2027 $91.40B, FY2026 $88.60B. This is the agency total, not a sum of the parsed lines.


## What this funds

Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA): This PPA provides funding for ICE OPLA attorneys who exclusively represent the U.S. Government in exclusion, deportation, bond, and removal proceedings before the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). This PPA also supports OPLA attorneys who provide legal advice to ICE programs and offices on a range of immigration, customs, criminal laws and policies, labor and employment law, commercial and administrative law, ethics standards, and defend the operational authorities and decisions of ICE officers and agents in Federal courts. Support personnel provide administrative and legal assistance, including paperwork- intensive removal proceedings before EOIR. OPLA is organized into four programmatic portfolios: Enforcement and Litigation, Field Legal Operations, General and Administrative Law, and Chief of Staff.


**Where it sits:** Civilian / Non-Defense › Homeland Security › Immigration and Customs Enforcement › Operations and Support › Office of the Principal Legal Advisor


*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. government. Civilian line dollars are parsed from agency Congressional Justifications and are approximate.*