Taxpayers Footing $175 Billion Dollars To Turbocharge Abductions, Unlawful Detention, and Complete Chaos
There’s a reason why the House passed its budget bill under the cover of darkness. If passed by the Senate and signed into law in its current form, the legislation will give huge tax cuts to the uber-rich like Elon Musk while gutting healthcare and food assistance for poor Americans. And, those cuts will be catastrophic for millions, slashing $880 billion from Medicaid, $230 billion from food assistance, and another $350 billion from higher education assistance. The bill would also allow Donald Trump to skirt court rulings, which have blocked many of his destructive orders.
But vastly overlooked in much of the reporting is an unprecedented $175 billion in taxpayer dollars to turbocharge abductions and family separation, expand chaotic and unsparing arrests that have also ensnared U.S. citizens and green card-holders, and further pad the pockets of private prison executives.
In fact, this massive bill bloated with giveaways to the wealthy at the expense of the vulnerable would make ICE “the best-resourced law enforcement agency in the history of the country, with more funding for detention than the entire federal Bureau of Prisons,” said the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. In just these first chaotic 100 days alone, the cruelty and costs have already been staggering.
MASS ABDUCTION OF OUR IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORS WILL ESCALATE
The bill will turbocharge the unsparing targeting of long-settled immigrants like Georgia Dreamer and TheDream.US National Scholar Ximena Arias-Cristobal, who has lived in the U.S. since she was four yet faces deportation after being pulled over for what police initially claimed was a traffic violation. “Community outrage intensified once Dalton authorities dismissed the traffic charges against Arias Cristobal after revealing she had been mistakenly stopped by the police officer who arrested her,” CBS News reported. Arias Cristobal’s father was also detained, and, like his daughter, has no criminal record.
But while construction business owner Jose Arias-Tovar was released and reunited with his family, Arias Cristobal remained locked up at the Stewart Detention Center, a private prison notorious for “abuse, medical neglect, and in-custody deaths.” In 2018, the prison’s operator, CoreCivic, was sued for forcing immigrants to work for as little as $1 a day or face punishment.
NEW: 19 year old Ximena Arias-Cristobal who came to America at age 4 has finally been reunited with her family in Dalton, Georgia after ICE detained her for three weeks over a now-dismissed red light traffic ticket and was in the process of trying to deport her (Video: News Channel Nine)
— Marco Foster (@marcofoster.bsky.social) 2025-05-23T12:51:16.421Z
This week, Arias Cristobal finally won her freedom after she was granted bond by an immigration judge. However, it doesn’t mean the end of her nightmare. “Though she was released from detention, Arias Cristobal will continue to face deportation to Mexico, as ICE has started a deportation case against her in immigration court,” CBS News reported. “The Department of Homeland Security has previously said she and her father should face ‘consequences’ for being in the U.S. illegally.” This isn’t the best use of taxpayer resources, it’s an anti-immigrant vendetta.
Meanwhile, immigrant contributors like Maryland dad Kilmar Abrego García and makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero remain stranded in a Salvadoran gulag. Dozens of the men shipped to CECOT arrived in the U.S. legally and the overwhelming majority have no criminal record at all, as Cato Institute said in a recent report. “A majority of the men are fathers. Altogether, the men were trying to support 44 children. The US government did not inform their families, lawyers, or anyone else of their impending imprisonment at US government expense in a Salvadoran prison known for torture and other abuses that would be illegal inside the United States.” $175 billion in taxpayer dollars will only fuel this.
MORE U.S. CITIZENS AND GREEN CARD-HOLDERS WILL BE ALSO BE ENSNARED
During a May 19 Senate hearing, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem refused to acknowledge that her department has unlawfully removed U.S. citizens, an ugly reality that the House budget could now turbocharge under this unprecedented expansion of ICE. And, as the past several weeks have shown, not even American children with cancer have been spared.
Last month, advocates revealed that the administration had disappeared three U.S. citizen children and their families, including a four-year-old child with stage four cancer. They said that the sick child had been illegally removed “without medication or the ability to consult with their treating physicians–despite ICE being notified in advance of the child’s urgent medical needs.” When Noem was questioned on these shocking removals, she said that mothers had chosen to take their children with them. But advocates have said otherwise. “Legal counsel for the two Louisiana families tells Rolling Stone that both mothers say they were not given the option of keeping their U.S. citizen children in the country,” the outlet reported.
“He was caught driving while brown in the United States of America.”@franifio.bsky.social + @wajali.bsky.social discuss ICE's arrest of Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez, a US citizen living in Florida — and how this sets a new precedent.Watch the full show on YouTube: www.youtube.com/live/YND9siM…
This targeting of U.S. citizens, as well as green card-holders, is not an aberration. In Arizona, U.S. citizen Jose Hermosillo was wrongfully detained for ten days after he got lost and asked a Border Patrol agent for help. While Hermosillo tried to explain that he was an American, he was ignored. “They say, tell your lawyer,” he said. In Florida, U.S. citizen Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez remained wrongfully detained at the request of ICE even after his birth certificate proved his nationality. Fabian Schmidt, a green card-holder from New Hampshire, was jailed in ICE custody for two months after being brutally detained at the airport. “Shortly after his arrest, his mother Astrid Senior described Schmidt being ‘violently interrogated’ at Logan Airport for hours — being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials and being put back onto a chair.”
And during a White House meeting with Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele, Trump stated that “home growns” – U.S. citizens – should also count on getting purged to the nation’s gulag. $175 billion in taxpayer dollars will only fuel this dystopian dream.
CHAOTIC, DESTRUCTIVE, AND RETALIATORY WORKPLACE RAIDS WILL BE THE NORM
Trump’s anti-immigrant obsession has already resulted in economic turmoil and uncertainty for small businesses all across the country, which have been subjected to chaotic, costly, and retaliatory raids that have ensnared essential workers and scared off others as employers are already facing critical shortages. This is all despite the fact that Trump’s own businesses have hired and exploited undocumented labor.
In Tennessee, the construction workforce “is taking a hit amid ICE operations,” WSMV4 reported on May 13, with some employers saying that their workers have been deported while others are too afraid to go to the jobsite despite having legal permission to work.
“After a targeted operation came to Nashville, the Department of Homeland Security reported over 100 arrests were made through a joint operation with ICE and the Tennessee Highway Patrol,” WSMV4 reported. “While operations are not confirmed to have ended, workers in various industries, including hospitality and construction, are fearful to leave their homes and head to work, even those with valid work visas.” One business owner said that one of her best employees had been among abducted workers. “One of our staff members was picked up by ICE,” she said. “He’s our number one guy. He’s on every job site.” It’s an open secret that without immigrant workers, there is no construction industry.
In Washington, D.C. this month, businesses were rattled after ICE agents showed up at roughly 100 locations to intimidate staff. “We were under the impression that they were focusing on trying to find criminals,” one business owner said. “And this is just a whole new level of harassment to our hard-working, law-abiding employees.” In Nashville, Tennessee, even a restaurant owned by a prominent supporter of the president was among those recently targeted. “We were already understaffed because of the ICE raids throughout the weekend,” one employee told Nashville Scene. “Then, around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, our manager came back and told anyone without legal status to go home.”
And in Madison, South Dakota, manufacturing facilities were raided less than a week after Noem was met with protesters in the area. $175 billion in taxpayer dollars will only fuel this.
“Let’s be clear: immigration needs to be managed but the answer is not to further criminalize our communities or line up the pockets of the prison and detention industry,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “Already, DHS manages the largest immigration detention system in the world. If this budget remains intact and becomes law, the harm and cost that we are already experiencing across our neighborhoods and our economy will be turbocharged to the detriment of all of us.”
