The Big Beautiful Bill Will Bring ICE Raids to Your City

[Passages]

Senate Democrats don’t have to separate the crackdown in Los Angeles and the Republican bill in Washington. The latter will allow for more of the former.

by David Dayen June 10, 2025

Expanding the Police State

Early in the reaction to the ICE raids and National Guard deployment that provoked such a strong reaction in Los Angeles, some Democratic senators landed on the thesis that it was all a distraction. “Don’t kid yourself they know they are absolutely getting cooked politically [with] their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine,” posted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), a member of the Senate Democratic leadership. “Instead of creating more chaos, Trump should talk to economists and everyday Americans about … the devastating impact his Big Beautiful Betrayal will have on seniors, families, and veterans,” said Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), another leadership team member, on Face the Nation.

Clearly the message from the top is to pivot. And when people are being snatched off the streets, and troops are being sent to American cities to quell protests that are largely peaceful, that messaging discipline can strike people as somewhere between weak and clueless. You go to war against the set of facts you have, not the facts you wish you had. The bill is hugely consequential—that’s why we’re doing an entire pop-up newsletter about it—but sometimes you have to be in the room, as we’d put it when I was doing stand-up comedy. If someone’s heckling you, and you plow forward with your act, you’ll lose everyone’s attention and look dumb.

But there is in fact a very easy way to connect Trump’s Beautiful Disaster with his authoritarian orders in Los Angeles: the bill would enable more ICE raids, more provocations, and the opportunity to seize more power.

Because the mega-bill is primarily about extending the Trump tax cuts, and because the most politically salient pieces are about cutting Medicaid, not much attention has been given to the surge of money that will go to immigration enforcement from this bill. The House version provided $151.3 billion in additional resources for immigration agencies, and while the Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet released its text, the targets in their budget resolution would raise that number even higher.
https://prospect.org/politics/trump-big-beautiful-bill-ice-raids-los-angeles-LA/

[littlemissmartypants]

1. This important point certainly needs...

More emphasis. This is only the second time that I have seen it mentioned anywhere and I read lots and lots of things every day.

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