There were dramatic scenes of protests in the streets of Los Angeles following a series of ICE raids on workplaces. According to numerous reports, the escalation was driven in part by Trump aide Stephen Miller’s frustration that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was not meeting the White House’s mass deportation goals. Miller reportedly urged top officials to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens.”
The ensuing arrests and deportations have thrust the issue back into the public debate – with some lawmakers being detained or arrested for speaking up. But on a practical level, the ICE raids and detentions are likely to increase in the coming months and years – especially if the GOP reconciliation budget passes Congress in the next few weeks.
The House version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $155 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement, which one analysis from the Economic Policy Institute estimates to be “more than five times the amount of current funding” – for a total of roughly $185 billion. The bill would triple funding for ICE operations, and calls for $45 billion to be spent on detention facilities – quadrupling current levels of spending. The Senate version of the bill appears to be very similar.
A significant portion of this funding will likely flow to two private companies that dominate the detention industry – CoreCivic and GEO Group, both of which made substantial contributions to Trump’s election. There is already evidence that business is booming; the Associated Press reported that the White House “has modified dozens of existing agreements with contractors and used no-bid contracts” to expand detention capacity, which is driving new revenue to both companies.
Despite the very public opposition to the White House’s anti-immigrant agenda, some analysts have noted that the response from Democratic lawmakers has been relatively muted – perhaps because of the impression that Trump’s immigration posture polls well. But there are many indications that people are not necessarily supportive of what they’re seeing thus far – from masked agents stoking fear in immigrant communities to the White House deploying Marines in response to protests. Millions of people took to the streets for “No Kings” protests on June 14th to oppose the Trump administration’s policies. Unfortunately, the reconciliation bill that is built around delivering massive tax breaks to the wealthy will also deliver billions to the mass deportation industry.
This first appeared on CERP.
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This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org.