For all the Trump administration’s talk of saving money and increasing “government efficiency,” the president demanded that huge amounts be appropriated in the Republicans’ recent budget bill to fund his mass-deportation program.
In all, $170 billion was set aside to be spent over the next four years for border and immigration enforcement. This total includes $45 billion to create a sprawling detention system (nearly five times the annual budget for the Bureau of Prisons), $30 billion for ICE operations, $46.6 billion for more border wall construction, and, as if that weren’t enough, a new $10 billion border patrol slush fund.
This level of funding is unprecedented. ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country. And that fact raises a question: What exactly are they going to do with all that money?
it’s true that our current situation is a disaster. it does not diminish the fact that an even bigger disaster is being constructed while we process and attempt to repair this disaster. the old ice agents are bad, evil, and cruel, but they were also all recruited under a different framing of what ICE is supposed to be. the new ones will have absolutely no compunctions, no reservations, and no hesitations.
They were recruited to round up brown people, whom they regard as criminal. That’s true of the new group and was true of ice and cbp agents recruited under previous administrations.