The Darkest Chapter of Immigration Enforcement Starts Now

Congressional Republicans just spent another $70 billion on mass deportations. The only silver lining here is that ICE will never get its legitimacy back.

COLUMN — Two votes. That’s the margin — 214–212, party-line — by which House Republicans put mass deportations on steroids Tuesday night, passing a $70 billion budget reconciliation package that bankrolls immigration enforcement through fiscal year 2029 with no Democratic votes and no annual appropriations fight ever again. President Trump signed it into law Wednesday morning in the Oval Office. They named it the Secure America Act.

The new law splits the money explicitly between the two agencies at the center of the crackdown: $38 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection, and $5 billion for broader Department of Homeland Security operations.

Because it moved through reconciliation, Republicans cleared it with simple majorities in both chambers, sidestepping a Senate Democratic filibuster and resolving the multi-month funding impasse that triggered a partial DHS shutdown this spring. The Senate passed the package late last week. The…