The Trump administration’s recently announced slash-and-burn budget proposal isn’t just an ongoing effort to swindle Americans to fund the racist and useless wall that he always said Mexico was going to pay for; it’s also truly an anti-immigrant wish list of “nativist horrors,” as one leading immigrant rights advocate has described it. “Trump would scale up immigration detention and the administration’s capacity to take migrant children into custody,” Vox reports, as he demands billions to hire more mass deportation agents and fund record detention, and, among the more horrific of the demands, $4 billion to hold children, even after children have died after being taken into federal custody. This budget must fail.
“He’s asking for $3.1 billion to increase the capacity of immigration detention centers to house 60,000 people at any given time, even though Congress had previously ordered him to decrease capacity to about 40,000 and the existence of viable alternatives to detention,” Vox notes—and he’s demanding this as officials have lowered standards at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. “ICE needs to consult with medical and mental health experts, congressional committees and advocates before finalizing their detention standards,” U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said, calling on the agency to halt this last move.
The administration, which just took a step to make the Customs and Border Protection agency more secretive, wants over $1.5 billion in part to hire over 1,000 additional border agents. Who knows how many of them would continue adding to the agency’s deadly and lawless history? ICE, meanwhile, would gain an additional 4,600 officers, to continue separating families like that of Elmer Sanchez, a Maryland immigrant who was swept up by ICE agents when he was just trying to follow the rules by attending his immigration appointment.
But that’s not all. Another $126 million would go to further fund the inhumane and illegal Migrant Protection Protocols policy, which has forced roughly 60,000 asylum-seekers to wait for their immigration court dates in Mexico, many in dangerous regions. “The vast majority of that money would go to the operation of temporary tent court facilities in US border towns, where Democrats say migrants affected by MPP aren’t getting fair hearings,” Vox says. In fact, the policy, better known as Remain in Mexico, has been criticized by former immigration judges as a due process nightmare that needs to be terminated. So, naturally, the administration seeks to continue something that’s bad for families.
“With his budget blueprint for a second term, President Trump is asking American taxpayers to spend billions to prosecute his war on immigrants: build a stupid and ineffective border wall that he promised Mexico would pay for; separate families through cruel and chaotic deterrence measures; lock up immigrants in squalid and life-threatening conditions in record numbers; dramatically increase the size, authority and impunity of his deportation agents; and more,” said immigrant rights advocate Frank Sharry. “Meanwhile, he slashes billions from health care, retirement security, education, housing, clean air, safe drinking water, food security and aid to the disabled.”