Washington’s Deportation Jackpot
The biggest immigration story no one is talking about is the funding.
WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are quietly advancing what could become the largest expansion of immigration enforcement funding in U.S. history—between $175 billion and $345 billion in real taxpayer dollars. All of it teed up to underwrite a deportation regime engineered to hum through the next administration—and likely the one after that.
Lawmakers are calling it “border.” That’s the pitch. But in reality? Bro Culture is demanding a national interior enforcement matrix powered by mass surveillance, mass detention, and mass deportation—facilitated by experimental AI tools and led by Stephen Miller. It sounds like a Bill Melugin fever dream, but it’s not. It’s the federal budget.
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The numbers are grotesque in both scale and intent. Senate Majority Whip John Thune—tall, telegenic, and as calculating as a Bond villain—authorized committees to locate $521 billion. Senate Budget Chairman Lindsey Graham earmarked $345 billion for immigration enforcement, split between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, to accommodate Trump’s mass deportation wishlist.
Republican “border” talking points are about safety and sovereignty, propaganda pillars built on breathtaking fictions of fentanyl smuggling by Mexican cartels “across an open border”—even as MAGA itself quietly admits that illegal crossings have plummeted.
The budget framework passed the Senate via vote-a-rama, 51–49, in the dead of night. Only Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., broke ranks. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson is already overdelivering. The only questions now are: When? How much? And what, exactly, is this money for?
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Here’s context: ICE spent $9.6 billion last year—triple its 2003 budget. It is now the sharp end of a lucrative spear: multi-billion-dollar contracts with CoreCivic, GEO Group, and newer names like Deployed Resources, which ran tent cities under Trump. Palantir’s software, known as “FALCON” and “Investigative Case Management”, is already embedded in the agency’s operations—tools critics call a blueprint for algorithmic deportation at scale.
A new class of profiteers is lining up to feed at the trough. This is a bonanza built on the backs of undocumented labor and a blueprint of fear. Democrats have noticed. “They’re trying to pull one over on us,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., cited “expensive mistakes” behind the ballooning request. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called it “eye-watering.”
Still, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan won’t say what the money’s for. Neither will Thune. Johnson? Silent. But in Washington, silence is a strategy. “Border” is the codeword. The policy is mass deportation. The price? Medicare cuts. Public disinvestment. Concentration camps—at home and abroad.
The last time this country built a detention archipelago this fast, it was post-9/11. The time before that? Japanese internment. This isn’t just a budget. It’s a blueprint—for forced removals delivered to scale on a system built to outlast elections, sidestep accountability, and smother resistance in red tape.
Fear becomes funding. Funding becomes forever. And so far none of the key players—Thune, Johnson, Jordan—will answer the simplest question: What, exactly, are taxpayers being asked to fund?