Priorities
As the administration’s shutdown now enters week two with no end in sight, daily life for American families is in dire straits. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, more commonly known as WIC, will run out of money and leave millions of kids and new and pregnant moms without access to nutritious foods unless the administration steps up to govern, NBC News reports.
Should funding lapse and leave millions of America’s families with empty bellies, it would be “among the first widespread, tangible effects of the shutdown for nonfederal workers,” the report said. “WIC provides critical nutritious foods, breastfeeding support, infant formula, and access to health screenings and referrals,” said the National WIC Association. “These services are not a luxury; they are a necessary lifeline.” WIC, which has assisted American families for decades, currently serves nearly seven million Americans, NBC News said.
Federal workers, meanwhile, are facing threats to their guaranteed backpay in the event of the government’s reopening. However, workers contracted by the federal government, such as Smithsonian Museum of American History cleaner Audrey Murray, will likely receive no backpay at all, CNN reports. “Low-wage service workers, including cleaners, janitors, security guards, cafeteria workers and other staffers who keep buildings operating, are often out of luck,” the report said. “It’s so sad that they think they can play with people’s lives,” Murray told CNN. “Stop this. Stop messing with people. We have families who depend on us.”
The Trump administration, however, has its priorities. While new moms worry about formula for their infants and furloughed federal workers stress about next month’s rent or mortgage, the administration’s mass deportation obsession will continue uninterrupted.
“All core immigration enforcement operations — from Border Patrol to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — will continue without interruption, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss agency planning,” as POLITICO reported last week. And as American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick explains, the federal government considers ICE’s mass detention and deportation operations “essential.”
“That means that throughout the shutdown, ICE would continue the current trends and levels of immigration enforcement including arrests and raids, expansion of the rapidly growing detention system, and deportations,” Reichlin-Melnick wrote ahead of the shutdown. Same with Border Patrol. “CBP’s law enforcement functions are deemed ‘essential’ and will continue unaffected during a shutdown, although some support staff may be furloughed,” he continued. “In 2022, CBP estimated that only 8% of its employees would be put on leave during a shutdown.”
So the wrongful arrest of U.S. citizen and construction worker Leo Garcia Venegas not once, but twice? Essential, according to this administration. The military-style deployment of armed agents from at least four federal agencies to a residential building in Chicago, resulting in ransacked apartments and the detention of several American citizens, including at least four children? Essential, according to the administration. Holding a 15-year-old American teen at gunpoint outside a Los Angeles school, and then telling his family it was just a mistake and a cool story he can now tell his friends? Essential, according to the administration. “There’s nothing exciting about getting guns pointed at you,” his mother said, “especially when you’re a 15-year-old, you don’t know what’s going on, you’re scared and there’s nothing exciting about that.”
But wait, you might be wondering. Wouldn’t immigration enforcement operation funding be affected during the shutdown too? While that may have been true during past shutdowns, it’s not this time around – and that’s entirely by design.
“Law enforcement personnel in past shutdowns have been considered essential, but ICE, for example, is further buffered by mandatory funding included in the One Big Beautiful Bill,” POLITICO noted. “When Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July, it provided ICE with $29.9 billion for enforcement and $5 billion for detention to be spent through September 2029,” Reichlin-Melnick continued in his piece. “This unprecedented level of funding can continue even if the broader federal government shuts down, including hiring and expansion of its workforce.”
So while federal workers face threats to their backpay and federal contractors like Audrey Murray may get nothing at all, ICE can still force FEMA workers to help with mass hiring as private prison executives are assured that their federal contracts with ICE are safe and sound. However, there is one ICE office that’s unsurprisingly closed during the shutdown: “the Office of Detention Oversight, which inspects detention centers to ensure they meet federal standards for the safe and humane treatment of immigrants,” The Washington Post reports.
“This year, the need for detention oversight has grown, with ICE’s detained population soaring to a record 61,000 in August and dozens of new facilities accepting detainees,” the report said. “Lawyers for immigrants and nonprofit advocacy groups say that deteriorating conditions at some locations are festering unchecked, and lawsuits have alleged that detainees are being held in overcrowded conditions, sometimes without beds, showers, adequate medical support or quality food.”
“The temporary absence of detention oversight could mean that conditions threatening the health and safety of immigrants at detention centers will go ignored, said Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE assistant director who served during the Biden and Obama administrations,” the report continued. Just last month, The Post reported that ICE’s own investigators found that Camp East Montana, the nation’s largest immigrant detention camp, had subjected some detained individuals to conditions that have violated at least 60 federal standards.
Violations outlined by ICE’s own investigators include failing to conduct basic intake screenings for suicidal ideations and other mental health conditions, ignoring detainees’ medical needs, and shutting detainees out from contact with their attorneys, loved ones, and even their assigned officer.
One detainee who was supposed to be on suicide watch appeared to have been ignored by staff while another detained individual was “given psychotropic medication but there was no record of that person ever consenting to it,” mirroring allegations from under the first Trump administration. The site also violated federal law by barring at least one federal lawmaker from exercising their oversight responsibilities, The Post said.
With the Congressional majority having given the administration’s anti-immigrant agenda a $170 billion cash influx, it’s unclear why the office overseeing ICE’s detention efforts is closed. But we can certainly see why the administration would want it closed. And, it’s baselessly blaming its usual scapegoat – undocumented immigrant communities – for the shutdown it could end today.
Even with a government shutdown and massive healthcare cuts, “the $170 billion mass deportation infrastructure is protected, while essential services that American families and communities rely on” are suspended, as America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas recently said. “Their priorities are as clear as they are harmful and misguided: blame immigrants and pursue mass deportation above all else.”
