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As Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, noted,
The spending is so large that it defies easy understanding. For example, ICE will receive a 365% increase in detention, spending $45 billion. For context, this is more than the combined budget for all 50 state prison systems. The current budget for the federal Bureau of Prisons is just over $8.3 billion.
Moynihan notes that the ICE detention budget is larger than the former budget for USAID, and that the increase is larger than budget cuts to education, SNAP, and larger than cuts to NIH, CDC and cancer research combined.
“It is on the scale of the type of supplemental budgets that the US passed when engaged in foreign wars,” Moynihan warns.
Once you spend that much on internal security, the system—which is profit-driven by the companies providing the apparatus—begins to feed on itself. It will demand ever more bodies in a supercharged prison/industrial complex.
The opportunities for waste, fraud and abuse also skyrocket, particularly as this regime cares almost nothing for competitive bidding, accountability or conflicts of interest.
This sudden influx of funds is not happening in a political vacuum. News media and social media are filled with images of gun-waving ICE agents rounding up ordinary, hardworking immigrants, many with decades of roots in their communities. Federal authorities are manhandling, indicting and arresting civic leaders, from judges to senators, who dare to stand up for the rights of immigrants in their communities. A majority of Americans are now opposed to the mass deportation policy and tactics and do not want to see them on steroids, funded by tens of billions in new money allocations.
Brutality as entertainment
While the Senate was busy approving tens of billions for a new police state, Trump took a trip down to Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis was more than happy to partake in a gross spectacle of brutality and racism alongside him.
During the visit, Trump was near giddy with excitement. He reportedly has always wanted to use animals such as snakes and alligators to keep migrants from crossing our Southern border. According to former Trump aide Miles Taylor, during his first term, Trump once even called up his former Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, to tell her he wanted to explore what it would take to build a 2,000 mile moat and fill it with snakes and alligators.
During the detention facility visit, Trump said to reporters, “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is, really, deportation.” He added he “wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long” and anyone who attempted to do so would be met by “a lot of cops in the form of alligators.”
The MAGA base treats this camp like some kind of entertainment venue, complete with merchandise. Podcaster Benny Johnson posted a clip to social media enthusiastically promoting “official Alligator Alcatraz merch” while asking his audience whether they would “rock this drip.”
https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/alligators-and-aliens
The spending is so large that it defies easy understanding. For example, ICE will receive a 365% increase in detention, spending $45 billion. For context, this is more than the combined budget for all 50 state prison systems. The current budget for the federal Bureau of Prisons is just over $8.3 billion.
Moynihan notes that the ICE detention budget is larger than the former budget for USAID, and that the increase is larger than budget cuts to education, SNAP, and larger than cuts to NIH, CDC and cancer research combined.
“It is on the scale of the type of supplemental budgets that the US passed when engaged in foreign wars,” Moynihan warns.
Once you spend that much on internal security, the system—which is profit-driven by the companies providing the apparatus—begins to feed on itself. It will demand ever more bodies in a supercharged prison/industrial complex.
The opportunities for waste, fraud and abuse also skyrocket, particularly as this regime cares almost nothing for competitive bidding, accountability or conflicts of interest.
This sudden influx of funds is not happening in a political vacuum. News media and social media are filled with images of gun-waving ICE agents rounding up ordinary, hardworking immigrants, many with decades of roots in their communities. Federal authorities are manhandling, indicting and arresting civic leaders, from judges to senators, who dare to stand up for the rights of immigrants in their communities. A majority of Americans are now opposed to the mass deportation policy and tactics and do not want to see them on steroids, funded by tens of billions in new money allocations.
Brutality as entertainment
While the Senate was busy approving tens of billions for a new police state, Trump took a trip down to Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis was more than happy to partake in a gross spectacle of brutality and racism alongside him.
During the visit, Trump was near giddy with excitement. He reportedly has always wanted to use animals such as snakes and alligators to keep migrants from crossing our Southern border. According to former Trump aide Miles Taylor, during his first term, Trump once even called up his former Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, to tell her he wanted to explore what it would take to build a 2,000 mile moat and fill it with snakes and alligators.
During the detention facility visit, Trump said to reporters, “We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is, really, deportation.” He added he “wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long” and anyone who attempted to do so would be met by “a lot of cops in the form of alligators.”
The MAGA base treats this camp like some kind of entertainment venue, complete with merchandise. Podcaster Benny Johnson posted a clip to social media enthusiastically promoting “official Alligator Alcatraz merch” while asking his audience whether they would “rock this drip.”
https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/alligators-and-aliens
