ICE Is About To Be EVERYWHERE

Written By Leeja Miller

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Transcript:

Thanks to the passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE is about to get an unprecedented boost in funding, while Trump border czar Tom Homan has promised that immigrant arrests could top 7,000 per day, an unrealistic goal given they’re struggling to meet Stephen Miller’s demands for 3,000 per day, but a goal that will be much more attainable as ICE expands by upwards of 10,000 agents and 100,000 detention center beds under the Big Beautiful Bill. Meanwhile, LA is still occupied by the military and provides a glimpse into what we can expect across the country moving forward. Today we’re breaking down what this increased funding for ICE means going forward, plus stick around to the end for other headlines I’m following today.

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Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that he just signed into law dramatically increases the size and funding of ICE, turning it into the largest federal police force in US history. To give you an idea of the sheer scale of this. ICE’s own website says it has an annual budget of approximately $8 billion and around 20,000 employees. The big beautiful bill provides for an additional $170 BILLION DOLLARS for immigration enforcement and detention over the next 4 years, including $45 billion dollars for new detention centers which, according to reporting by Democracy Now represents a 265% increase and is larger than the budget of the entire federal prison system. And ICE’s enforcement budget would increase by $30 BILLION dollars. There is also a fund of $3.5 billion dollars just for ICE to hand out to states who want to build detention centers similar to so-called Alligator Alcatraz, the concentration camp built in the middle of the Florida everglades that has already flooded once since it was finished a month ago and in which prisoners are already complaining of horrific conditions, including maggots in their food, no water for bathing, denial of basic medical treatment, and more. So $3.5 billion of taxpayer gifts to states who build similar setups. Reminder that immigrant detention centers are meant to hold immigrants who are moving through the CIVIL immigration system. They are not supposed to be prisoners, if they’ve committed a crime they should be processed through the criminal justice system and put into an actual prison to serve their time. Many of the people who the administration claims are “violent criminals” have already served their time, this is just additional extrajudicial detention. And most of the people being held there have no criminal records or only minor misdemeanors. Reminder that overstaying your visa in the US is not a federal crime, it is a civil issue in the immigration system. Alcatraz is a prison. The facility in Florida is supposed to be an immigrant detention center. Calling it Alligator Auschwitz is more accurate.

And so, with this massive, unprecedented expansion of funding for ICE, Trump will have an additional 10,000 ICE agents, at least, on the ground in cities across the country, and the administration has promised to add 100,000 beds to immigrant detention centers. And if what the Supreme Court has done this term wasn’t enough, don’t worry, they’ll be back in October to do more damage. As Slate recently reported, one case may provide greater leeway for home invasions by ICE officers. Case v. Montana, which the court agreed to hear next term, is a case regarding a welfare check gone wrong. Police entered a man’s home without a warrant or an emergency, based on a thirdhand report that the man may be suicidal. They beat down his door to conduct this “welfare check” and, once inside his house, found drugs and drug paraphernalia which they are then using to try to convict him of a crime. The case hinges on whether that search pursuant to a welfare check was unconstitutional. But the state of Montana where the incident occurred is arguing that what the officers were doing wasn’t technically a search, they were simply offering aid. They were trying to help!! As Robyn Nicole Sanders writes for Slate, quote, “The court has previously upheld limited emergency entries, but always with clearly defined exigencies, not the unbounded, unverifiable standard Montana now asks it to adopt. Indeed, the standard it proposes has no fixed boundaries. No definition of danger. No threshold for entry. No requirement that the belief be verified, or even verifiable. If the court adopts it, ICE will be one of the many law enforcement agencies not needing a warrant to cross your threshold. It will only need a justification. A welfare call. A safety tip. A closed door. A silence misread or claimed as threat.

That is what makes this case so dangerous under Trump’s renewed deportation agenda. ICE will not have to say it was pursuing someone. It can say it was concerned. That it heard something. That it feared someone might be in distress. Silence becomes probable cause. A raid becomes a rescue.” So adding thousands more ICE agents, who seem to have made it a practice of operating without ID and with faces covered, means truly endless opportunities to violate the rights of anyone, whether or not they’re an immigrant, just for looking brown or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s already been happening, it’s going to get worse as Trump’s big dumb bill is implemented. The funding for ICE is spread out over 4 years, so the goal of 10,000 more ICE agents is to be reached by 2029, though I’m sure they’ll be moving as fast as they possibly can to hit that target. That being said, according to reporting from MSNBC, even with a ton of money ICE may struggle to recruit that many people. ICE tried to hire 10,000 more officers during Trump’s first term, and a 2017 DHS report found that to recruit that many agents would require interviewing 500,000 applicants. ICE underpays compared to many police departments, though that may change with this increased funding, but also increased protests against ICE agents shows just how much the public fucking hates them. Some agents don’t seem to care, but that will absolutely have a deterrent effect on future ICE recruits. So, if nothing else, keep showing up to protest to make any would-be ICE recruits think twice. That being said, out of desperation to show force, the Trump administration may turn to more drastic measures to increase headcount–like deputizing local law enforcement, hiring out through contracting agencies, lower hiring standards so less and less qualified ICE agents, who already have some of the lowest hiring standards, are given access to military-style weapons and put on the ground in communities, or they may turn to recruiting from already-militarized militant groups like the Proud Boys or other right wing extremists. Though again it’s unclear how many of them would willingly take a job that paid trash and everyone hated. As we’ve already seen, though, the Trump regime is willing to cut corners and violate laws to get its immigration plans through, and infusing ICE with money will certainly only embolden this approach. This will likely lead to more of what we’ve seen in LA over the last month.

Despite the fact that protests in LA have died down somewhat and the news cycle has moved on from the wall to wall coverage of just a few weeks ago, the fact remains that LA is a city occupied by federal forces. On Monday morning, a major demonstration by militarized ICE agents at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, in an area with a large immigrant population, culminated with ICE agents marching through the park on horseback or in armored vehicles while children played. There has been no explanation for the demonstration, no one was detained, and it appears to have been a show of force to intimidate a city that has become the epicenter of Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Which makes sense, California has long been seen as a rogue blue state that needed to be brought to heel by the Trump administration. AND they have tons of immigrants and share a border with Mexico? Prime target material. And raids have continued throughout the city, and elsewhere in Southern California, including over the holiday weekend. People have been arrested, disappeared, with their families struggling to find them in the system, and thousands more have been scared into hiding, not attending school or showing up to their jobs. Crops remain unharvested and rotting in the ground from a lack of workers. 90 members of the California national guard remain deployed in the city under federal control. And Trump has promised similar style takeovers in DC and also in New York City if quote unquote “communist” Zohran Mamdani becomes the mayor there and starts enacting his extremist policies, like free buses and childcare, god forbid. [insert clip] Of course it’s unclear exactly what he means when he says they’ll “run things” but he promises they’re at least looking into it for Washington DC, but especially in New York City, with its large immigrant population and democrat-led government, that would be a prime target to expand what’s happening in LA, using the pretext of any unrest over the next few months as a means to send in the troops. Indeed, just earlier this week border czar and Elmer Fudd lookalike Tom Homan promised to quote unquote flood the zone with ICE agents if New York City elects Mamdani. And Trump has threatened to arrest and deport Mamdani if he interferes with ICE operations in New York. Mamdani is a naturalized US Citizen, the perfect target for the Trump regime which is intent on denaturalizing US citizens, a process that is up until now incredibly rare. And Mamdani truly represents a flash point in the establishment generally, democrats and republicans, with both sides attempting to crush his momentum. History can teach us a lesson here: in the lead up to world war II, numerous centrists and left-leaning leaders fell in line behind some of Hitler’s rhetoric out of fear of the growing discontent among the populace and the growing push for more progressive, socialist policies. Those in power, the ones with the money and the ones owned by the people with money, tend to prefer fascism over the prospect of the people gaining popular power. They would rather shoot themselves in the foot and stand behind a dictator than support a growing popular movement. Mamdani is proving that in real time, as the democratic establishment shows increased hostility towards him alongside MAGA and Trump threatening to arrest and deport him. Not to mention that, in addition to his politics, he represents everything that most establishment politicians are not, that is: a cutie pattootie who actually seems like someone who could hold a normal conversation with other humans. AND he threatens the established power structures? It’s all too much! And so I don’t doubt that he will continue to play a large role in the political unrest in this country, because he represents the hopes of so many people in a city that houses some of the largest numbers of immigrants in the country. New York City has always represented the “melting pot” nature of the country, and that now makes it a target.

And I’ve spoken multiple times on this show about the powers that Trump has to send in the troops, whether that’s through the Alien Enemies Act, the Insurrection Act, or something else. And while I think it’s important to know about those laws, I don’t think I want to go into rehashing those analyses today. I was looking back over those episodes, for example my episode from April 23rd titled “Could Trump Declare Martial Law & Suspend Habeas Corpus” and it is actually shocking how much my feelings and analysis of what’s happening and what’s to come has changed in the short 10 weeks since then. Because what I’ve come to realize is that while knowing about the confines of the law is important because we do need to keep our feet in reality and remind ourselves that NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL or legal or okay, it is not actually helpful to look at how Trump may be confined by the law or, if he breaks it, by the courts. The courts, specifically the Supreme Court, has proven its determination to enable Trump’s policies through unconscionable judicial orders, so whether or not the insurrection act, for example, provides recourse for states that want to sue the administration for violating the law, which many states and localities are doing, doesn’t really weigh on how this administration will act or whether or not it will be constrained. We have learned time and again, thus far, 7 months in, that the only thing that seems to constrain Trump and his lackeys is blowback from rich and powerful people, and even that doesn’t seem to do much. The best that can be hoped for at this point is for enough people to get in the way that it slows the regime down, whether that's Congresspeople repeatedly showing up to detention centers demanding to be let in, protestors making public sentiment strongly known to the point that they cannot find people to be ICE agents or cannot undertake ICE raids without constantly being at least inconvenienced, or lower court judges forcing the regime to provide legal explanations for the atrocities it’s attempting to commit, or state leadership standing against ICE enforcement in their jurisdiction. We are at the point of individuals having to stand together to slow the onslaught. We are far past the point of relying on laws as written or systems or processes as typically practiced to provide any sort of guardrails. We should be operating under the assumption that those guardrails do not exist. And so 10 weeks ago I was saying that the insurrection act provides for certain limitations when the President acts in bad faith, for example, that’s out the window. There are all sorts of guardrails in place when it comes to “bad faith” that no longer apply. Assume he is acting in bad faith and no court is going to stop him from doing so.

So the future ICE or military occupations of blue states and cities are not going to look as proscribed by the insurrection act. It’s going to look a lot like LA. Increased ICE raids, followed by civilian unrest, which is important and should continue but, no matter how peaceful, those protests will be used as pretext to send in a federalized national guard and other armed troops trained to kill to roam the streets and intimidate residents into compliance. And then some new atrocity will unfold and our attention will be diverted elsewhere, and the occupation will remain for an undetermined amount of time, punctuated by various shows of force like we saw in MacArthur Park on Monday, allowing for the facilitation of increased ICE raids as the militarized federal law forces work together to intimidate the populace into getting out of their way. LA is a blueprint for what’s to come in New York and Chicago and DC and maybe even here in Minneapolis as well. And the Big Beautiful Bill provides the budget needed to build the camps to process the vast numbers of detainees as quickly as possible and the Supreme Court has paved the way for the rendition abroad of thousands of immigrants to third countries they have never been to, regardless of the legality of their presence in the US or even of their citizenship status.

And so what can we expect moving forward? A lot of people are saying in my comments section and elsewhere that Civil War is imminent. A recent interview on Slate’s podcast What Next TBD with New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie sheds some interesting light on the period leading up to the US civil war in the 1850s. I highly recommend giving that episode a listen. I agree with a lot of Bouie’s analysis. We are not likely headed towards a civil war in the sense of two sides taking up arms, but we are looking at and already experiencing increased political violence, civil unrest, and state violence especially against brown bodies. Keep an eye on alligator auschwitz and other new detention centers being built, call on your lawmakers to check the conditions in those places if they are getting built in your state. We have a tendency to turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against immigrants in this country but the reality is that a lot of the people who were disappeared to concentration camps in WWII were immigrants. Anne Frank was an immigrant whose legal status was stripped away by the Nazis. Black people weren’t considered citizens after the Dred Scott supreme court decision in the lead up to the Civil War. They had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, according to the Supreme Court. And now this supreme court has determined that there are no national injunctions available to protect immigrant rights, that they can be sent away to third countries where they’ve never been, and that anything the president does is above the law.

In times like these I find it actually very grounding to turn to history. There are parallels, of course it will not repeat itself exactly, but it’s been really bad here before, many argue it never stopped being bad for black people and immigrants here, but seeing that history, I don’t know, it gives me hope. We’ve moved through awful times like this before. People are going to die or be deeply harmed because of it, and I’m not at peace with that, but I have hope that we will move through this and there will be another side for us to come out on. In These Trying Times it can be very easy to catastrophize, to feel like this truly is the end times. Many many people throughout history have felt that way too. And yet we persist. Two books that have given me a surprising amount of comfort despite being about heinous times in history are Until Justice Be Done by Kate Masur, which charts the abolitionist and civil rights movement leading up to the US civil war, as well as The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton, which charts various fascist movements in the 20th century and attempts to provide a definition of what fascism looks like. It was published back in 2005 but remains incredibly relevant for understanding our current time. I am someone who seeks information and knowledge when I feel hopeless, so if you are too then try checking those books out at your local library.

Other headlines I’m watching today: The Trump regime is continuing its attack on judges, this time the Department of Justice has taken the very unusual step of suing all 15 federal judges in the US District Court for the District of Maryland. DOJ lawyers typically DEFEND judges when they are faced with lawsuits. Now they have named the 15 judges, individually in their official capacities, in a lawsuit alleging the judges are overstepping their authority and undermining the executive branch in rulings that bar ICE actions in the state. This is related to a ruling by the chief judge in May that ordered a 48-hour pause on deportation for immigrants who have filed habeas petitions in an effort to stop the administration from removing the immigrants before the court could hear their petitions, something this regime has done over and over again, most notably with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case originated in Maryland. And because the entire bench in Maryland is subject to the lawsuit, the lawsuit has been removed to a court in Virginia overseen by Judge Thomas Cullen, a Trump appointee.

And, the Supreme Court in an unsigned emergency ruling lifted the injunction that had been holding back a deluge of federal government layoffs pursued under DOGE. The initial injunction was put in place while the case played out in court, accusing DOGE of making significant changes and layoffs without seeking approval from Congress. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has regularly become the voice of reason on the court, was the sole public dissenting voice on the decision, accusing the justices of a “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this president's legally dubious actions in an emergency posture." and warning “This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it.” This new ruling means that even though a case is actively moving through the court to determine the legality of these firings, the government can move forward with laying off tens of thousands of employees, who would then be called back in to work if it is later determined that the layoffs were illegal. This creates greater chaos in the federal government, wastes taxpayer money as this shit gets messy and creates waste, fraud, and abuse, the exact thing DOGE claims to be attempting to get rid of. But as I’ve said before, the chaos is the point. The Trump regime can point to this and say look at all this dysfunction, let’s just get rid of all of it. What a waste. And then maybe Trump will lose this one, so the workers will be un-laid off, and then a circuit court will rule against Trump as well, and then it will come before the Supreme Court again and maybe they rule in Trump’s favor, as they seem determined to do, and those workers will be re-laid off. This could take months to years to play out, completely upending the lives of tens of thousands of government employees and rendering entire agencies nearly non-functional because they don’t even know if they’ll have employees to implement anything, leading to a holding pattern that will massively impact the functioning of the entire federal government. As Justice Jackson lamented in her dissent, this will take a “wrecking ball” to the federal government. I’ll be keeping an eye on all these developing stories and more, so come back every Monday and Wednesday evening for more analysis. We have fun here.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday about how our healthcare system is fucked!!

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