Mainstream Media Discovers ICE, After Years of Funding Its Expansion
Newsweek reports on 'anti-ICE units' responding to Trump's policies, accurately quoting a pastor on an 'extreme crusade.' What they conveniently gloss over is the bipartisan role in empowering ICE. From its creation under George W. Bush in 2003, consolidating 22 agencies, to its massive expansion under Obama—who deported more people than any previous president—ICE didn't appear out of thin air.
For over two decades, both parties funded, institutionalized, and normalized the very mechanisms Trump leveraged. It's almost as if the mainstream only 'discovers' an issue when it can be neatly wrapped in a partisan package. So, a pastor calls it 'extreme' in 2018. Where was the sustained, media-amplified outcry when ICE's budget ballooned from $3.2 billion in 2003 to over $8 billion by 2018? One
might wonder how many 'extreme crusades' we need before the media connects the dots between funding, policy, and the predictable human suffering they ultimately report as isolated incidents. The system wasn't broken by Trump; it was built, brick by bipartisan brick, for someone like him to exploit.