At What Cost? Budget to Turbocharge Mass Deportations at Cost to Americans’ Economic and Health Security

Access online version of the press release HERE

Washington, DC — America’s Voice has been asking the question: “At what cost” to the American people does the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant and mass deportation agenda come?

In “We’re About to Find Out What Mass Deportation Really Looks Like,” Nick Miroff of The Atlantic highlights that the Republican budget process is set to dramatically scale up funding for immigration enforcement – turbocharging mass deportations and the chaos and counterproductive cruelty that we have been witnessing in recent months.

Meanwhile, the Republican budget also potentially seeks to slash essential government programs such as Medicaid and SNAP benefits in order to fund Trump’s proposed ICE budget increases. And recall that, as USA Today recently reported in, “Thousands of DHS agents shift to deportation instead of drugs, weapons and human trafficking,” even real public safety threats are being deprioritized in the process of obsessing over mass deportation of long-settled immigrant contributors.

According to Mario Carrillo, Campaigns Director of America’s Voice:

“As egregious as recent months have been under the Trump administration, the idea of turbocharging mass deportations tenfold would make things all the worse in this country. Gutting essential programs like Medicaid and SNAP that keep American families afloat in order to enrich private contractors and fund the mass deportations of long-settled and deeply rooted immigrant community members would come at a high cost to Americans’ priorities, values, and economic security. And none of that would actually fix our immigration system or keep Americans safe.”

Below, find key excerpts of “We’re About to Find Out What Mass Deportation Really Looks Like,” by Nick Miroff of The Atlantic:

“Using the budget-reconciliation process, Republican lawmakers are now preparing to lavish ICE with a colossal funding increase—enough to pay for the kind of social and demographic transformation of the United States that immigration hard-liners have long fantasized about achieving.

Although GOP factions in the House and Senate have squabbled over the contours of the bill, spending heavily on immigration enforcement has bicameral support. The reconciliation bill in the Senate would provide $175 billion over the next decade. A House version proposes $90 billion. To put those sums in perspective, the entire annual budget of ICE is about $9 billion.

…ICE officials envision a private-sector contracting bonanza that would rely on old workhorses such as CoreCivic and Geo Group-–the for-profit firms best known for running immigration jails—while enlisting large data companies to make the deportation system run more like an e-commerce platform.”