After a slog through Congress, Trump managed to pass his “Big Beautiful Bill.” Of the many attacks on workers contained in the legislation, one of the worst is the $170 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Far Right’s broader war on immigration.
This obscene budget includes $46.5 billion for border wall construction, $45 billion for ICE detention capacity, and $30 billion for ICE recruitment and training. Meanwhile, the broader bill that it’s a part of cuts social safety net programs, including health care, public education, student loans, environmental protections, and food access. According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, the bill will make ICE the single-largest federal law enforcement agency in U.S. history. This is more funding than that of most militaries across the globe.
The war on immigrants remains the glue that holds together the MAGA movement. As disagreements have emerged on the Right over questions of foreign intervention, austerity, and other parts of the Trump administration’s agenda, the war on immigrants allows for some unity in the coalition. Trump’s immigration policies, while facing significant resistance, continue to receive higher approval ratings than the rest of his policies, which have plummeted in polls since he took office.
This budget comes as the Right continues to find new horrific and dehumanizing ways to carry out the war on immigrants. To deter border crossings, the U.S. military has seized control of one-third of all land along the southern border, threatening migrants who cross with charges of trespassing on military property. The military also remains deployed against immigrant communities and their allies in Los Angeles. Recently, about 100 federal agents and soldiers marched through MacArthur Park in a show of force to terrorize the community densely populated by Central Americans and Mexicans.
In terms of immigrant detention, the Right is giddy about Alligator Alcatraz, a makeshift detention center in the Florida Everglades. Trump has also been advancing his efforts to send migrants to detention in third-party countries. Along with the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador, migrants are also being sent to South Sudan, while the administration pursues similar detention agreements with at least 53 nations. Trump has also begun threatening to go after naturalized citizens. This move was made possible after Trump shifted the Overton window by first attacking green card holders like Mahmoud Khalil, and the Supreme Court recently opened the door to ending birthright citizenship.
It is clear that the Right is committed to advancing the war on immigrants any way it can, and the massive funding for ICE in the recent budget reconciliation bill should make that clear. But as Reichlin-Melnick explains in an interview with Jacobin, throwing money at ICE doesn’t resolve the larger challenges of conducting a war on immigrants.
First, there is the devastating economic impact of deporting immigrants, many of whom make up the workforce in important industries, including agriculture, construction, and childcare. There are also concrete logistical challenges. A war on immigrants requires personnel, and ICE, along with every other police department across the United States, is struggling to recruit sufficient numbers. Additionally, the United States lacks the facilities to detain the number of immigrants that Trump has promised. These logistical challenges, in part, explain the measures Trump is attempting to normalize, such as using third countries for detention or deploying the military to police the border.
Unite the Working Class for Immigrant Rights
The immigrant rights movement cannot be discouraged by the recent advances of Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. We have to remember that his policy is still full of weaknesses, and it is only a matter of time before the Right encounters these real limitations. They cannot carry out everything they are promising, and even if they could, it would not resolve the economic misery leading some sectors of the U.S. working class to embrace chauvinist, anti-immigrant policies.
Our movement must offer a perspective that fights these immediate attacks on immigrants with a broader vision: that a unified working class can address the economic crises facing the United States. U.S.-born workers and immigrant workers can fight together for to build a labor movement that is powerful enough to resist the austerity that the Right has in store. The youth-led immigrant rights movement, with its epicenter in Los Angeles, provides a strong basis for our movement to grow. Activists across the country have been inspired by LA. This can be an opportunity to popularize combative demands like abolishing ICE, ending all militarization of the border and immigrant communities, immediately tearing down the border wall, and opening borders now.
Together, we must call on our unions to mobilize their full membership and even organize work stoppages until attacks on immigrant rights and cuts to social services are repealed. By combining these demands, we can confront the lie that immigrants are attacking the livelihoods of U.S. born workers. Clearly, the attacks are coming from the politicians who impose austerity and the bosses that exploit us. We can also strengthen our united efforts by coordinating with other movements against oppression, such as the student movement for Palestine, the Black Lives Matter movement, and all movements against oppression and exploitation led by workers and popular sectors in Mexico, Canada, Panama, and throughout North America.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” shows that we are dealing with a serious adversary in this far-right, anti-immigrant administration. The immigrant rights movement must be just as serious and ambitious in how we organize to fight back.
