Homeless camp under a bridge, Portland, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
President Trump has made historically steep cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and other programs, claiming we can’t afford them. Yet at the same time he and his Republican allies have plowed record sums into ICE, even as popular support for the agency has plunged.
In June, Trump signed a $70 billion bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol through the remainder of his term. This is the second Republican-led, multi-billion-dollar infusion into these agencies since Trump retook office.
Last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) granted $75 billion to ICE and $65 billion to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). That alone was seven times more than ICE’s annual budget and four times more than CBP’s.
This funding is being used to supercharge Trump’s mass deportation regime. It has allowed ICE to hire 12,000 new, poorly trained officers and agents, leading directly to the horrific scenes we saw in Minnesota and elsewhere.
Where else is this money going? To massive prisons.
Since 2025, ICE has spent over $700 million to purchase nine warehouses they intend to refurbish into new mega-detention centers. This includes three “large-scale” facilities with 7,500 to 10,000 planned beds in Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Reportedly, their plan is to spend $38.3 billion to acquire and retrofit 24 warehouses across the country.
To this end, ICE is extending their partnership with private prison companies like The Geo Group, which has been widely criticized for abusing detainees. Hunger and labor strikes have broken out at several of their facilities protesting inhumane living conditions this year, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey. Deaths in these facilities have risen to record levels.
ICE is also expanding its biometric surveillance capabilities. In May 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded a $25 million contract to the biometric firm BI2 Technologies. That amount is more than five times larger than the company’s most recent DHS contract.
In short, ICE is preparing itself for more large-scale Minnesota-style invasions of American cities. Border Czar Tom Homan has repeatedly threatened to “flood” U.S. cities with ICE agents. There will be “more agents in the community and more agents in the worksite,” he vowed last year.
Many of these threats have targeted New York City — one of the host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. “You’re going to see more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen in New York City, and it’s coming,” Homan remarked in early June. “I just reviewed an operational plan.”
Amid a growing affordability crisis and massive inflation, Republicans are prioritizing ICE violence over helping struggling families.
Despite spending tens of billions now on ICE, Trump insists that there simply isn’t enough money to fund social programs. At a press conference Trump remarked, “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things… We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”
For Trump, there is money for federal agents that injure, maim, and kill anyone who gets in their way, but no money for Medicare. There is money for more detention centers that put children in cages, but no money for childcare.
The problem is not simply that Trump refuses to fund programs that would help working people. It’s also that his administration’s reckless spending actively hurts us. According to a new report, the Social Security trust fund is expected to reach depletion by the end of 2032 — a year earlier than previously expected. The Social Security trustees cite three factors: lower birth rates, less immigration, and the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Despite right-wing fearmongering, immigrants — whether documented or undocumented — pay taxes, drive innovation, and contribute to economic growth. Funding an agency that makes life intentionally harder for immigrants drives away the very people who have made — and continue to make — this nation great.
Now more than ever, we need politicians in Congress who will rein in Trump’s senseless spending, work to abolish ICE, and put the people first.
