A ballooning Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget. Hiring bonuses of $50,000. Swelling ranks of ICE officers, to 22,000, in an expanding national force bigger than most police departments in America.
President Donald Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, but achieving his goal wouldn’t have been possible without funding from the big tax and spending cuts bill passed by Republicans in Congress, and it’s fueling unprecedented immigration enforcement actions in cities like Minneapolis and beyond.
The GOP’s big bill is “supercharging ICE,” one budget expert said, in ways that Americans may not fully realize — and that have only just begun.
“I just don’t think people have a sense of the scale,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress and a former adviser to the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget.
The full new allocated amount is hidden behind links but was reported when the “BBB” (god, it’s such a stupid name) was passed: $150 billion over four years, roughly $37.5 per year.
To compare to our neighbors, Canada’s entire yearly military defense spending in 2024 was $29.3 billion and Mexico’s was $16.7 billion.
This money is directly us taxpayers paying for our own oppression, and at this scale was always going to fund an invasion from within.