| From | Rights Action <[email protected]> |
| Subject | ICE to become biggest police force in the US |
| Date | July 14, 2025 6:07 PM |
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[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
July 14, 2025
**
ICE to Become Biggest Police Force in the US
------------------------------------------------------------
**
Demonization, criminalization, kidnapping and deportations of immigrants to get ever worse. Ever more families and lives torn asunder.
------------------------------------------------------------
[link removed]
Below: “ICE is about to become the biggest police force in the US”, by Judith Levine ([link removed])
“When it runs out of brown and Black people to deport, ICE – perhaps under another name – will be left with the authority and capability to surveil, seize and disappear anyone the administration considers undesirable. It is hard to imagine any president dismantling it.”
Social, racial cleansing
Rights Action is dismayed, though not surprised, at last week’s spending bill. The current administration is deepening its racist aggression against immigrants and impoverishing the poorest sectors of the US population.
Drivers of forced migration
Meanwhile Rights Action partner groups in Honduras and Guatemala continue to suffer and resist the same aggressions of different sectors of the global economy (tourism, “privatized cities”, African palm and other food-for-export sectors, mining, etc.) in partnership with the traditional elites.
Both countries have similar versions of the “pacto de corruptos” [pact of the corrupt] controlling most branches of government and institutions of the State), thus severely limiting any reforms and changes the elected governments might try to implement.
As rich, powerful global north countries – most notably the US – worsen their attacks on migrants, these same countries relentlessly push to expand their economic interests and control globally, re-producing the very same drivers of forced migrancy.
ICE is about to become the biggest police force in the US
By Judith Levine ([link removed]) , The Guardian, July 9, 2025
[link removed]
Trump’s budget bill is creating a colossus with more resources than many national militaries
On Thursday, congressional Republicans passed Trump’s 1,000-page budget, and the president signed it on Saturday. The rich will get obscenely richer. The poor will be hungrier and sicker, work more precarious ([link removed]) , and the planet unrelentingly hotter.
The symmetry is elegant: cuts to healthcare and food programs average about $120bn ([link removed]) each year over the next decade, while the tax cuts will save households earning more than $500,000 about $120bn a year ([link removed]) .
Trump got what he wanted. But enriching himself and his wealthy friends at the expense of everyone else has long been his life purpose. It was not until he became president, with the Heritage Foundation’s wonks, the deportation czar Stephen Miller, and six loyal supreme courtiers behind him, that he could reshape the US in his own amoral, racist, violence-intoxicated image. In fact, the latter goal may be dearer to him than the former.
The night before the Senate vote, JD Vance summed up the administration’s priorities: “Everything else,” including the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit estimates and “the minutiae of the Medicaid policy,” he posted ([link removed]) , “is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
The vice-president’s indifference to the lives of millions of Americans – particularly to the class of Americans from which this self-described ([link removed]) “hillbilly” hails – enflamed the Democrats ([link removed]) and the left. But his comment also woke everyone up to another major set of appropriations in the budget. As Leah Greenberg, co-chair of the progressive activist group Indivisible, put it on Twitter/X ([link removed]) : “They are just coming right out and saying they want an exponential increase in $$$ so they can build their own personal Gestapo.”
The press had been focused on the wealth gap the budget turns into the San Andreas Fault. It had been dutifully mentioning increases in funding for the military – to an unprecedented $1.3tn ([link removed]) – and “border security”.
Set aside for a moment that phrase’s implication, that the US is being invaded – which it isn’t – and it is still not apt. The jurisdiction of the federal police force that this budget will finance promises to stretch far beyond immigration; its ambitions will outstrip even the deportation of every one of the nearly 48 million immigrants ([link removed]) in the country, including the three-quarters of them who are citizens, green-card holders or have temporary visas.
The colossal buildup of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will create the largest domestic police force ([link removed]) in the US; its resources will be greater ([link removed]) than those of every federal surveillance and carceral agency combined; it will employ more agents than the FBI. ICE will be bigger than the military of many countries.
When it runs out of brown and Black people to deport, ICE – perhaps under another name – will be left with the authority and capability to surveil, seize and disappear anyone the administration considers undesirable. It is hard to imagine any president dismantling it.
ICE will receive $45bn for immigrant detention, to be spent over four years – more than the Obama, Biden and first Trump administrations combined. The agency says it is planning on a total of 100,000 beds ([link removed]) . But grants to the states loosely slated for “enforcement” total $16.5bn. If they use the money to build and lease more detention camps, the American Immigration Council ([link removed]) estimates, capacity could reach 125,000, just under the population of the federal prisons.
Dipping into a pot totaling $170bn ([link removed]) , the Department of Homeland Security intends to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, bringing the total to 30,000, as well as 8,500 border patrol agents. For comparison, the FBI ([link removed]) has about 23,700 employees, including 10,000 special agents.
Like ICE’s budget, DHS’s is fat with redundancies: $12bn to DHS ([link removed]) for border security and immigration; $12bn to Customs and Border Protection for hiring, vehicles, and technology; $6.2bn for more technology. And then there’s over $45bn to complete the jewel in the king’s crown: Trump’s “beautiful” border wall. That’s on top of approximately $10bn spent during his first term for a project he promised would cost less than $12bn ([link removed]) – and be bankrolled by Mexico.
The government will raise revenue from its prey
To balance the expenses of the hunt, the government will raise revenue from its prey. The cruelty written into the fees seems almost an afterthought. According to the New York Times’s breakdown ([link removed]) , for a grant of temporary legal residence, for instance, a refugee pays $500 or $1,000 ([link removed]) , depending on whether they’re fleeing armed conflict or humanitarian crisis. There’s a new $250 fee ([link removed]) to apply for a visa for a child who’s been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent.
Immigrants must fork over as much as $1,500 for status adjustments ordered by a judge. And if they’re arrested after a judge’s removal order for missing a hearing, they will be levied $5,000. The budget does not specify whether you pay for a downward adjustment to your status or what it costs to be snatched when you do show up at court, which is now regular Ice procedure.
Observed as from a Google satellite, the outlines of a wide-ranging, increasingly coherent police state come into focus. The boundaries between federal and local, military operations and civilian law enforcement are smudged.
During the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, Trump federalized the national guard to put down an uprising that didn’t exist, and an appeals court let him ([link removed]) . The marines, restricted by the Posse Comitatus Act ([link removed]) from civilian law enforcement, detained a US citizen ([link removed]) anyway.
To circumvent the prohibition ([link removed]) against deploying the military to enforce immigration law, the president declared ([link removed]) an “invasion” at the southern border, and the Pentagon took more territory under its control. Last week ([link removed]) it added 140 miles of land to the marine air station in Arizona and has announced plans for 250 miles more, in Texas, under the air force’s aegis.
“Alligator Alcatraz”: Heather Cox Richardson reports that ([link removed]) national guard troops have been deployed by governor Ron DeSantis to “Alligator Alcatraz”, the new immigrant lockup in the Florida Everglades. Two hundred marines have been sent to Florida to back up ICE, and ICE agents will be stationed at marine bases in California, Virginia and Hawaii. The military budget ([link removed]) earmarks $1bn for “border security”.
A budget is the numerical representation of its makers’ values. So the upward redistribution of wealth that this budget exacerbates and the police state it invests trillions of dollars in are of a piece. What connects them is not just the profit to be made building, leasing and managing the infrastructure. When people lack food, medicine and housing, when public spaces deteriorate and families have little hope of security, much less mobility, rage and crime rise.
And when that happens, the police – whether ICE or the marines, local cops or private security officers – will be mobilized to put down dissent and protect the oligarchs’ property from a desperate populace.
(Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist, and author of five books.
Her Substack is Today in Fascism ([link removed]) . Recent articles by Judith ([link removed]) .)
Tax-Deductible Donations (Canada & U.S.)
To support land and environmental defenders, and human rights, justice and democracy defense struggles in Honduras and Guatemala, make check to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: Box 82858, RPO Cabbagetown Toronto, ON, M5A 3Y2
Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Direct deposits, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Donations of securities, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Resolution of landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits
[link removed]
TESTIMONIO–Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala
Edited by Catherine Nolin & Grahame Russell (Between The Lines, 2021)
[link removed]
*******
Please share and re-post this information
*******
More info: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.rightsaction.org
e-Newsletter: [link removed]
Previous e-Newsletters: [link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed] ([link removed])
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[link removed] Facebook ([link removed])
[link removed] Twitter ([link removed])
[link removed] Website ([link removed])
[link removed] Instagram ([link removed])
[link removed] YouTube ([link removed])
============================================================
This email was sent to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
why did I get this? ([link removed]) unsubscribe from this list ([link removed]) update subscription preferences ([link removed])
Rights Action . Box 50887 . 20091-0887 . Washington, DC 0 . USA
[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frightsaction%2Fice-to-become-biggest-police-force-in-the-us Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frightsaction%2Fice-to-become-biggest-police-force-in-the-us)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
July 14, 2025
**
ICE to Become Biggest Police Force in the US
------------------------------------------------------------
**
Demonization, criminalization, kidnapping and deportations of immigrants to get ever worse. Ever more families and lives torn asunder.
------------------------------------------------------------
[link removed]
Below: “ICE is about to become the biggest police force in the US”, by Judith Levine ([link removed])
“When it runs out of brown and Black people to deport, ICE – perhaps under another name – will be left with the authority and capability to surveil, seize and disappear anyone the administration considers undesirable. It is hard to imagine any president dismantling it.”
Social, racial cleansing
Rights Action is dismayed, though not surprised, at last week’s spending bill. The current administration is deepening its racist aggression against immigrants and impoverishing the poorest sectors of the US population.
Drivers of forced migration
Meanwhile Rights Action partner groups in Honduras and Guatemala continue to suffer and resist the same aggressions of different sectors of the global economy (tourism, “privatized cities”, African palm and other food-for-export sectors, mining, etc.) in partnership with the traditional elites.
Both countries have similar versions of the “pacto de corruptos” [pact of the corrupt] controlling most branches of government and institutions of the State), thus severely limiting any reforms and changes the elected governments might try to implement.
As rich, powerful global north countries – most notably the US – worsen their attacks on migrants, these same countries relentlessly push to expand their economic interests and control globally, re-producing the very same drivers of forced migrancy.
ICE is about to become the biggest police force in the US
By Judith Levine ([link removed]) , The Guardian, July 9, 2025
[link removed]
Trump’s budget bill is creating a colossus with more resources than many national militaries
On Thursday, congressional Republicans passed Trump’s 1,000-page budget, and the president signed it on Saturday. The rich will get obscenely richer. The poor will be hungrier and sicker, work more precarious ([link removed]) , and the planet unrelentingly hotter.
The symmetry is elegant: cuts to healthcare and food programs average about $120bn ([link removed]) each year over the next decade, while the tax cuts will save households earning more than $500,000 about $120bn a year ([link removed]) .
Trump got what he wanted. But enriching himself and his wealthy friends at the expense of everyone else has long been his life purpose. It was not until he became president, with the Heritage Foundation’s wonks, the deportation czar Stephen Miller, and six loyal supreme courtiers behind him, that he could reshape the US in his own amoral, racist, violence-intoxicated image. In fact, the latter goal may be dearer to him than the former.
The night before the Senate vote, JD Vance summed up the administration’s priorities: “Everything else,” including the Congressional Budget Office’s deficit estimates and “the minutiae of the Medicaid policy,” he posted ([link removed]) , “is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
The vice-president’s indifference to the lives of millions of Americans – particularly to the class of Americans from which this self-described ([link removed]) “hillbilly” hails – enflamed the Democrats ([link removed]) and the left. But his comment also woke everyone up to another major set of appropriations in the budget. As Leah Greenberg, co-chair of the progressive activist group Indivisible, put it on Twitter/X ([link removed]) : “They are just coming right out and saying they want an exponential increase in $$$ so they can build their own personal Gestapo.”
The press had been focused on the wealth gap the budget turns into the San Andreas Fault. It had been dutifully mentioning increases in funding for the military – to an unprecedented $1.3tn ([link removed]) – and “border security”.
Set aside for a moment that phrase’s implication, that the US is being invaded – which it isn’t – and it is still not apt. The jurisdiction of the federal police force that this budget will finance promises to stretch far beyond immigration; its ambitions will outstrip even the deportation of every one of the nearly 48 million immigrants ([link removed]) in the country, including the three-quarters of them who are citizens, green-card holders or have temporary visas.
The colossal buildup of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will create the largest domestic police force ([link removed]) in the US; its resources will be greater ([link removed]) than those of every federal surveillance and carceral agency combined; it will employ more agents than the FBI. ICE will be bigger than the military of many countries.
When it runs out of brown and Black people to deport, ICE – perhaps under another name – will be left with the authority and capability to surveil, seize and disappear anyone the administration considers undesirable. It is hard to imagine any president dismantling it.
ICE will receive $45bn for immigrant detention, to be spent over four years – more than the Obama, Biden and first Trump administrations combined. The agency says it is planning on a total of 100,000 beds ([link removed]) . But grants to the states loosely slated for “enforcement” total $16.5bn. If they use the money to build and lease more detention camps, the American Immigration Council ([link removed]) estimates, capacity could reach 125,000, just under the population of the federal prisons.
Dipping into a pot totaling $170bn ([link removed]) , the Department of Homeland Security intends to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, bringing the total to 30,000, as well as 8,500 border patrol agents. For comparison, the FBI ([link removed]) has about 23,700 employees, including 10,000 special agents.
Like ICE’s budget, DHS’s is fat with redundancies: $12bn to DHS ([link removed]) for border security and immigration; $12bn to Customs and Border Protection for hiring, vehicles, and technology; $6.2bn for more technology. And then there’s over $45bn to complete the jewel in the king’s crown: Trump’s “beautiful” border wall. That’s on top of approximately $10bn spent during his first term for a project he promised would cost less than $12bn ([link removed]) – and be bankrolled by Mexico.
The government will raise revenue from its prey
To balance the expenses of the hunt, the government will raise revenue from its prey. The cruelty written into the fees seems almost an afterthought. According to the New York Times’s breakdown ([link removed]) , for a grant of temporary legal residence, for instance, a refugee pays $500 or $1,000 ([link removed]) , depending on whether they’re fleeing armed conflict or humanitarian crisis. There’s a new $250 fee ([link removed]) to apply for a visa for a child who’s been abused, abandoned or neglected by a parent.
Immigrants must fork over as much as $1,500 for status adjustments ordered by a judge. And if they’re arrested after a judge’s removal order for missing a hearing, they will be levied $5,000. The budget does not specify whether you pay for a downward adjustment to your status or what it costs to be snatched when you do show up at court, which is now regular Ice procedure.
Observed as from a Google satellite, the outlines of a wide-ranging, increasingly coherent police state come into focus. The boundaries between federal and local, military operations and civilian law enforcement are smudged.
During the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, Trump federalized the national guard to put down an uprising that didn’t exist, and an appeals court let him ([link removed]) . The marines, restricted by the Posse Comitatus Act ([link removed]) from civilian law enforcement, detained a US citizen ([link removed]) anyway.
To circumvent the prohibition ([link removed]) against deploying the military to enforce immigration law, the president declared ([link removed]) an “invasion” at the southern border, and the Pentagon took more territory under its control. Last week ([link removed]) it added 140 miles of land to the marine air station in Arizona and has announced plans for 250 miles more, in Texas, under the air force’s aegis.
“Alligator Alcatraz”: Heather Cox Richardson reports that ([link removed]) national guard troops have been deployed by governor Ron DeSantis to “Alligator Alcatraz”, the new immigrant lockup in the Florida Everglades. Two hundred marines have been sent to Florida to back up ICE, and ICE agents will be stationed at marine bases in California, Virginia and Hawaii. The military budget ([link removed]) earmarks $1bn for “border security”.
A budget is the numerical representation of its makers’ values. So the upward redistribution of wealth that this budget exacerbates and the police state it invests trillions of dollars in are of a piece. What connects them is not just the profit to be made building, leasing and managing the infrastructure. When people lack food, medicine and housing, when public spaces deteriorate and families have little hope of security, much less mobility, rage and crime rise.
And when that happens, the police – whether ICE or the marines, local cops or private security officers – will be mobilized to put down dissent and protect the oligarchs’ property from a desperate populace.
(Judith Levine is Brooklyn-based journalist, essayist, and author of five books.
Her Substack is Today in Fascism ([link removed]) . Recent articles by Judith ([link removed]) .)
Tax-Deductible Donations (Canada & U.S.)
To support land and environmental defenders, and human rights, justice and democracy defense struggles in Honduras and Guatemala, make check to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: Box 82858, RPO Cabbagetown Toronto, ON, M5A 3Y2
Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Direct deposits, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Donations of securities, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Resolution of landmark Hudbay Minerals lawsuits
[link removed]
TESTIMONIO–Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala
Edited by Catherine Nolin & Grahame Russell (Between The Lines, 2021)
[link removed]
*******
Please share and re-post this information
*******
More info: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.rightsaction.org
e-Newsletter: [link removed]
Previous e-Newsletters: [link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed]
[link removed] ([link removed])
[link removed]
[link removed] Facebook ([link removed])
[link removed] Twitter ([link removed])
[link removed] Website ([link removed])
[link removed] Instagram ([link removed])
[link removed] YouTube ([link removed])
============================================================
This email was sent to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
why did I get this? ([link removed]) unsubscribe from this list ([link removed]) update subscription preferences ([link removed])
Rights Action . Box 50887 . 20091-0887 . Washington, DC 0 . USA
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