Trump Budget Bill Turns ICE Into A Superpredator

Men in masks kidnapping people off streets or turning businesses into ghost towns is now nothing more than an everyday occurrence in the United States. The Trump administration never actually cared whether or not the people it ejected from the country due to their race, color, or creed were, in fact, criminals. All it ever wanted to do was place its thumb on the scales of justice to ensure the population of non-white, non-MAGAs decreased steadily.

The United States once promised a better life for anyone fleeing oppression or simply seeking a better fortune than could be found in their own countries. We haven’t been that nation for most of the last decade, if not longer. Instead, we’re the kind of country that aligns itself with people who would rather see a boat full of refugees sink than agree to share “their” country with anyone who isn’t as big on bigotry as our current president.

The new budget bill barely passed and it took the assumption that Vice President JD Vance wouldn’t accidentally vote the wrong way to get it done. It’s a Trump bill, which means social services will be stripped of funding, rich white voters will be able to take advantage of new tax breaks, and the administration’s hateful expulsion of immigrants will be extremely well-funded. The same administration that created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the pretense of making a big government smaller actually believes the parts of the government it likes should get much, much bigger.

This dissonance prompted a war of words between Trump and the former head of DOGE, Elon Musk — the white foreigner who spent a lot of his own money ensuring Trump’s return to office. Musk, for once, acted like a classic conservative, criticizing the billions being added to the deficit, despite Trump’s claims about trimming the federal fat while yanking the power of purse away from Congress as often as possible.

Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of the new budget is the current national focal point, Immigration and Customs Enforce. ICE — along with its private prison contractors — is getting an exponential increase in funding, making it clear this administration is little more than a one-issue presidency.

The legislation makes U.S Immigration and Customs and Enforcement the largest federal law enforcement agency, giving it $45 billion for building new detention centers in addition to $14 billion for deportation operations. It also includes $3.5 billion for reimbursements to state and local governments for costs related to immigration-related enforcement and detention.

The bill funds an expansion to approximately double immigrant detention capacity, from about 56,000 detention beds to potentially more than 100,000. Private prison firms — many of which were significant financial supporters of GOP candidates for Congress as well as the president’s election campaign — will reap major financial benefits from this spending, as nearly 90 percent of people in ICE custody are currently held in facilities run by for-profit firms.

In terms of national concern, immigration is very low on the list of things bothering most people. The people doing the most complaining about migrants are racists who have suddenly been given a megaphone by a president who shares many of their deliberate misconceptions. These people complain immigrants are taking jobs from US citizens but there’s been no rush by US citizens to fill the void left by ICE raids at meat packing plants, farms, and other labor-intensive occupations. They also claim migrants burden the government with their free-loading, ignoring years of data showing migrants not only pay more than their share of taxes, but also commit criminal acts less frequently than natural-born citizens.

ICE is now the largest law enforcement agency in the United States — the recipient of nearly $70 billion to fund work it doesn’t really even need to be doing. As CBP data shows, the flow of migrants into the country has slowed to a trickle. The people being hunted down by ICE’s Gestapo-esque squads are generally just people who work hard, pay taxes, respect laws, and are a net gain for this country. The criminal element has largely been removed already and whatever’s left simply isn’t enough to justify raids of businesses, neighborhoods, and public gatherings. All that’s doing is fluffing ICE’s detainment stats. And the only people who care about those numbers are the bigots currently serving as un-elected officials in the Trump Administration.

And this means that ICE will continue to be this terrible long after Trump leaves office (assuming, of course, he decides to respect this particular law). Once the money becomes part of an agency’s budget, it takes a concerted effort to roll back the expected annual funding. And from what we’ve seen of the federal government pretty much since its inception, funding only gets cut if it scores political points. Since ICE is part of the DHS and the DHS is still pretending it gives a single shit about homeland security, all it will take for ICE to remain the largest US law enforcement agency is periodic assertions about its national security-related efforts, even if those efforts are just regular-ass racism the agency pretends makes this country safer.