Billions for ICE, Cuts for the Poor: Trump’s Bill Redefines Federal Priorities

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Public records show that ICE’s arrests of immigrants without criminal records have surged by more than 1,400% in the past year. The agency has repeatedly deployed masked officers and National Guard troops in workplace and community raids, tactics critics say resemble authoritarian crackdowns.

Donald Trump’s massive new spending measure, known by Democrats as the “One Big Ugly Bill,” is set to dismantle central pillars of the American social safety net and create the most expansive immigration enforcement system the country has ever seen.

The legislation advances $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act over the next decade, threatening health coverage for millions of low-income Americans. However, among the least discussed aspects of the measure, it effectively turns America into a police state.

The bill devotes more than $150 billion to expand the detention, surveillance, and deportation operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under the bill, ICE’s detention budget alone would explode from $3.4 billion this year to $45 billion by 2029, surpassing the combined funding of all federal prisons.

Public records show that ICE’s arrests of immigrants without criminal records have surged by more than 1,400% in the past year. The agency has repeatedly deployed masked officers and National Guard troops in workplace and community raids, tactics critics say resemble authoritarian crackdowns.

The spending package also authorizes the creation of a federal citizenship registry, combining Social Security and immigration data into the first centralized list of U.S. citizens. Officials claim the database will help election authorities verify voter eligibility, echoing Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of widespread immigrant voter fraud. Privacy experts have warned that this system amounts to a national surveillance apparatus launched without any public debate or congressional hearings.

“This level of integration among federal agencies handling sensitive personal data has never existed before,” NPR reporters Jude Joffe-Block and Miles Parks reported. They noted that privacy advocates and even some conservatives have long opposed a government-run citizenship roster.

Polling from Pew Research shows that most Americans oppose several core pieces of Trump’s immigration agenda. Sixty-one percent reject the deportation of immigrants to prisons in El Salvador. Fifty-four percent disapprove of increased workplace raids. Yet a growing share—56%—now supports expanding the border wall with Mexico, a rise from 46% in 2019.

Inside the Republican Party, support for Trump’s enforcement push is nearly unanimous. Eighty-eight percent of Republicans favor expanding the border wall. Eighty-one percent back using state and local police to help deport immigrants. Among Democrats, overwhelming majorities oppose the policies, with only 27% supporting any expansion of the wall.

The bill’s most controversial provisions have drawn condemnation after Trump visited a new detention facility in the Everglades, where he joked that alligators and snakes would attack any immigrant attempting to escape. The Florida Republican Party has since begun selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise. Historians have noted that such imagery recalls Jim Crow-era propaganda depicting Black children as bait for alligators—a tactic used to dehumanize and terrorize Black communities.

Despite widespread criticism, Trump has pressed forward with the measure, calling it a fulfillment of his long-standing promises.

“This is going to be the bill that finally puts America first,” Trump said during a rally in Florida. “No excuses.”

Nevada Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford called the legislation a direct attack on the health, safety, and dignity of Black communities across this country. “Stripping away Medicaid coverage while throwing billions into an unaccountable immigration dragnet is not fiscal responsibility—it’s reckless extremism,” Horsford stated. “We will not be silent as this Congress tries to reverse decades of progress and push people further into poverty and fear.”