Congressional Republicans have got to get their act together on the budget reconciliation package, which hopefully will be settled this weekend. Yet, liberal pro-immigrant groups might have inadvertently made the case to pass the mega-bill since it’s chock-full of immigration enforcement measures that make pro-illegal alien activists recoil.
Immigration Impact, a pro-amnesty outfit, posted this about Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” They’re mad because more people who shouldn’t be here can be detained “supercharge” style if it passes. It was meant to serve as a warning; it ended up being quite the sales pitch [emphasis mine]:
On April 30, the House Judiciary Committee advanced a budget reconciliation bill which, if signed into law, would represent the single biggest increase in funding to immigration enforcement in the history of the United States. The bill would provide nearly $80 billion for internal immigration enforcement, including $45 billion dollars for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and $14.4 billion for ICE transportation and removal operations. This adds to the nearly $67 billion the House is also planning to give to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including $51.6 billion for border barriers. On top of these staggering sums of money, the House Judiciary bill would also impose mandatory fees on a wide variety of humanitarian immigration protections, putting them out of reach for most applicants.
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Should these funds be appropriated by Congress, over the next few years ICE could ramp up mass deportation operations to a level never before seen in American history, making ICE the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the entire federal government, with an army of officers fanning out into communities to carry out enormous arrest operations, while the agency paid private prison contractors billions to stand up new detention centers and massively ramp up deportation flights.
Under the House Judiciary bill, ICE would be given $45 billion to spend on detention through September 30, 2029. This would be a staggering 365% increase on an annual basis over ICE’s current $3.4 billion detention budget, putting ICE’s annual detention budget at $12.4 billion. By contrast, the federal Bureau of Prisons currently has a budget of $8.3 billion, meaning that Congress could give ICE a budget for detention that is nearly 50% larger than the entire federal prison system.
The budget would also provide ICE $14.4 billion for transportation and removal operations, an astronomic 500% annual increase from the current $721 million provided in the current budget. Along with this funding would come eight billion dollars to hire 10,000 new ICE officers over the next five years, as well as $858 million for retention and signing bonuses and $600 million to hire sufficient human resources personnel to carry out that level of mass hiring.
At the same time as Congress seeks to ramp up detention, arrests, and removals, it would give a measly 30% increase to the immigration court budget. This raises the serious possibility that ICE would build detention centers faster than judges could come on board to reduce backlogs. As a result, people would be held in detention for longer periods of time without any hearings, as the courts could not keep up with the rapid growth of the enforcement system.
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When viewed from 10,000 feet, the House bill represents a fundamental reshaping of American society and due process for immigrants. ICE would become more powerful than every other federal law enforcement agency, allowing for a level of immigration enforcement that has no historical precedent. Meanwhile, asylum would become effectively impossible for all but the people with enough money to jump through the absurd hoops put in place, and defending oneself in immigration court would become extraordinarily difficult for anyone without enough money to pay these news fees.
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So, what’s the problem? I mean, these measures are exactly what I voted for, along with most of the country who got Donald J. Trump elected the 47th president of the United States. We want immigration measures enforced, others erased, and, most of all, the deportation of anyone who is here illegally. After four years of invasion, deportations need to be supercharged. There was no due process when Biden used taxpayer funds to import these invaders. They can and should be returned to sender just as quickly. Also, to show how lost this movement has become, they’re making cops who get these illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, and child rapists off our streets the bad guys. You have it backward, you fools.
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