Under the budget plan currently being debated by the U.S. Congress, we’ll be paying for nativist fever dreams on a national scale. The terrifying visuals coming out of Minneapolis of armed federal agents dressed like they’re going to war with a local community will only get uglier. The senseless arrests of community members like Massachusetts high school student Marcelo Gomes Da Silva will turbocharge. Masked abductions, including those of immigrants trying to follow the rules by attending their immigration court dates, will only become more emboldened. And we will be paying for all of it.
This ugliness was previewed in Minnesota this week, where federal agents were dressed up in full tactical gear outside a Mexican restaurant in Minneapolis. “Michelle Gross, president of the local Communities United Against Police Brutality group, said the show of force appeared designed to ‘terrorize people into submission,’” the AP reports.
They tried lie about an ICE presence. MPD assisted with closing off the area. This is completely wrong.
— Jason Chavez (@jchavezmpls.bsky.social) 2025-06-03T16:44:48.044Z
federal agents on east lake st
1/2 Today in Minneapolis, ICE/FBI raided a taco restaurant, yes, you read that correctly, a taco restaurant, dressed in full battle gear—long guns, body armor, the whole damn militarized show. Do they think they’re in a war zone? This is about instilling terror, rooted in racism. It won’t work.
— Jennifer ✨Get In Good Trouble (@thejenniwren.teamlh.social) 2025-06-03T22:42:47.525Z
If signed into law, the budget bill recently passed by the House would make ICE the highest-funded law enforcement office in the nation, giving this rogue agency’s masked officers $75 billion in taxpayer funds to turbocharge unsparing arrests, mass family separation, and for-profit detention with a goal “to detain over 100,000 individuals daily, including families with children,” Migrant Insider said.
All in all, the budget demands up to $175 billion to terrorize our immigrant neighbors while gutting healthcare and food assistance for poor Americans.
“The numbers read like a carceral fever dream: $14.4 billion for deportations, $10 billion to hire 10,000 new ICE officers, and nearly $2.5 billion for ‘state and local partnerships’—a polite euphemism for reanimating Trump-era 287(g) agreements that deputize local cops to act as ICE agents,” the report continues (emphasis ours).
To Stephen Miller, who actually is the one running DHS and previewed exactly what he was going to do if he returned to the White House with Trump, those who stand to be ensnared by ICE are just faceless numbers. But, there are faces. These are real people. Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego García is a human being. Makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero is a human being. Georgia college student Ximena Arias-Cristobal is a human being.
“I am not just an immigrant, I am a human being, I am a Georgian, and I am an American without papers,” says Ximena Arias-Cristobal.Ximena, a 19-year-old TheDream.US scholarship recipient, has been recently released from detention after her arrest during a Georgia traffic stop.
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2025-06-03T20:29:48.790Z
“This isn’t just an immigration issue, it’s a human rights issue,” the Georgia Dreamer said during a recent press call hosted by America’s Voice. “People are being stripped of their dignity and basic freedoms and it is something we can not ignore. I am not just an immigrant, I am a human being, I am a Georgian, and I am an American without papers. No one should have to go through something like this. ”
Last year, the American Immigration Council (AIC) found that the cost of rounding up neighbors like Arias-Cristobal “would incur an annual cost of $88 billion, with the majority of that cost going towards building detention camps,” the report said (emphasis ours). “It would take over ten years, and the building of hundreds to thousands of new detention facilities, to arrest, detain, process, and remove all 13.3 million targeted immigrants …”
“The total cost over 10.6 years (assuming an annual inflation rate of 2.5 percent) would be $967.9 billion,” the report continued (emphasis ours).
Immigrants jailed in Anson, Texas form SOS message highlighting their fear of deportation to a notorious El Salvador prisonThe cry for help was captured by a @reuters.com drone The S-O-S message, meaning "save our souls," is an international code signifying extreme distress and a plea for help
— Jenn Burrill (@jennburrill.bsky.social) 2025-05-01T03:08:22.609Z
You know who else, aside from Miller, is really excited about those new detention camps? The private prison executives who will be scoring lucrative federal contracts. During a call with investors this year, CoreCivic President Damon Hininger remarked that this is “truly one of the most exciting periods” of his career. The administration is also sending many innocent people to a gulag in El Salvador, in violation of their due process rights, and has publicly stated an intention to do the same to U.S. citizens. And we’ll be paying for it.
Last year, HuffPost’s Matt Shuham did a deep dive into Miller’s plans, “In multiple interviews, Miller has gleefully described daily flights out of the camps to all corners of the world, an undertaking he said would be “greater than any national infrastructure project” in American history.” “Gleefully.” That’s how the Trump administration views infrastructure – not building roads, bridges and other vital projects but instead building camps to detain those deemed disposable.
These horrific visuals show community after community overrun with swarms of militarized ICE agents and law enforcement in militarized tactical gear. This is not what Americans want.
— America's Voice (@americasvoice.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T16:47:38.887Z
In Minneapolis, neighbors say they are shocked by what they see as militarization of their community.
“Onlooker Jennifer Davila, who works in the community, said it already had been on edge because of raids. It’s tight-knit, and ‘if something happens, we know about it,’ she said,” the AP continued. “They had a white van, a black van and a tank. For a raid, that’s pretty excessive,” she told the outlet. “And then coming into a brown community and doing this, because we have all kinds of immigrants, not just Latinos.”
WATCH: “You stand in my church. You promised me.”A Minneapolis pastor confronts the chief of police about helping ICE
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) 2025-06-04T13:03:22.457Z
Pastor Ingrid Rasmussen confronted Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara over his department assisting with crowd control during the operation, highlighting just one of the ways that local entanglements with ICE can harm communities. “You stand in my church,” the pastor said. “You’re not listening to me. You stand in my church. You promised a better relationship.”
Our communities, our neighbors, our fellow Americans will be facing these dangerous theatrics and cruel arrests on steroids under the House budget agenda. That’s bad enough already. Now they may have to pay for it too.
