Democrats 'Target' ICE Funding While Still Funding ICE
The mainstream narrative points to Democrats' 'concerns' over ICE's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' bucks during a Trump-era crackdown in Minneapolis. The article highlights the supposed division between 'progressives' and 'moderates' on ICE's funding, suggesting a genuine internal struggle. What they conveniently gloss over is that this 'debate' happens yearly, yet ICE's budget consistently swells,
regardless of who occupies the White House. The so-called 'progressives' rarely, if ever, manage to actually defund or even significantly decrease ICE's budget—a budget that hit an estimated $8.6 billion in FY2023, up from $5.7 billion in 2017. (Source: Congressional Research Service, Department of Homeland Security Appropriations). One might wonder at what point 'targeting' an agency's budget
becomes less about meaningful oversight and more about optics. It's a classic political two-step: loudly denounce a situation while quietly ensuring the funding spigot remains wide open. These 'concerns' often amount to little more than window dressing, allowing politicians to claim progress while the machinery of immigration enforcement—and its associated human costs—continues uninterrupted.
After all, how many 'big, beautiful bills' can one agency receive before the 'targeting' looks less like opposition and more like tacit approval?