By Joan Sheperd
WASHINGTON — On May 29, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol to the tune of $70 billion, pouring money into migrant terror through 2029. The funding comes in addition to the $170 billion budget approved last year with the passage of Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Trump signed the bill the following Wednesday.
Through this legislation, Congress is giving ICE more than triple its annual funding and breaking from conventional parliamentary norms by attaching almost no stipulations on how the money is to be spent. Included in the budget are billions of dollars to recruit, train, hire and equip more personnel to carry out mass deportations, coordinate with local law enforcement and expand surveillance technology that uses artificial intelligence.
This comes as resistance has spread through immigrant detention camps across the country, with hunger and labor strikes reported at Delaney Hall in New Jersey and other facilities in California, Texas and Washington. At Delaney Hall, a privately run concentration camp, resistance has intensified since detainees launched a hunger and labor strike May 22. Immigrants detained there began the strike around demands against illegal detention, forced labor, medical neglect, spoiled food and retaliation. GEO Group, the private prison corporation that runs Delaney Hall, relies on detainee labor to operate the facility.
As the strike entered its seventh day, following letters from detainees condemning psychological and physical torture, malnutrition, unsanitary conditions and legal obstacles keeping people detained indefinitely, the state doubled down on its commitment to the unrelenting onslaught against the deepest and most oppressed sections of the working masses in the U.S
The grossly inflated budget for more coordinated and professionalized attacks marks an unprecedented move toward further militarization against the working masses domestically, as the reality of rising fascism becomes more apparent in the United States.
[Image Source: American Immigration Council]
