Not anymore the solution.
By allocating more than $175 billion to be spent by 2029 between ICE operations and border enforcement, Congress is making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the most well-funded federal law enforcement agency in history. ICE will have more money at its disposal annually for the next four years than the combined budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals and the Bureau of Prisons. Altogether !
Added to this is the $59 billion spent on fortifying and monitoring the border with Mexico. Plus $45 billion to rent an archipelago of detention centers.
What are the results since January, 20th ? ICE has made nearly 95,000 arrests in four months. The available data contradict the administration’s security rhetoric (hunting down « crazies, criminals, terrorists, gangs, » or « the worst of the worst »). More than half of those arrested had no criminal record. And this proportion continues to grow, rising from 54 % in January to 70% in June. We’re facing mass arrests that casts its net as wide as possible, no longer bothering to distinguish between suspected criminals and simple undocumented immigrants.
If you are tourists or if you are traveling for business, whatever you do, keep your passeport every where you go : this country has become excessively dangerous for foreigners. Especially if you have brown hair, you have enjoyed the sun, and have a nice tan.
The arrests aren’t really arrests, but rather raids. ICE agents wear hoods. They take someone away without showing any insignia, badge, or warrant, or revealing their identity. Nothing distinguishes them from death squad kidnappers, from some Latin America countries. As for deportations, they are made to strange destinations like South Sudan (a country at war) Uganda (a dictatorship), sometimes to the countries of origin.
What will be the economic consequences of this mass deportation ?
No one left to pick up the tomatoes you eat. No one left to take care of our elder. No one left to serve french frites in my favourite fast food : our beloved president will have to stop his golf training and to go back at work (I mean a real one).
The underground economy that was allowing many small agricultural businesses to survive while supplying the market is over. The cost of legal labor is likely to explode because it will become scarce.
But you’re being lied ! ICE has 20,000 agents spread across 400 offices. Today, ICE aims to arrest 3,000 immigrants per day. That’s an average of 75 people per office. Or 84,000 people arrested per month. That’s roughly what ICE has barely managed in three months. The Trump administration is asking ICE to speed up.
ICE is unable to meet these eccentric goals. Even if ICE recruit new agents very quick, it will be unable to spend all its budget. Necer mind, many public money will be highjacked by GEO group or others companies specialized in imprisonment. More than this and what’s worst : this policy will quickly make disappear a cheap and servile labor force.
Unless some states, California in the lead, seeing workforce problems growing, decide to divorce. This wouldn’t be the first time some states divorce from the rest of the United States, over a labor question : remember the slavery issue and how it has ended ?