How $178 billion is creating a police state [View all]

How $178 billion is creating a police state
A massive funding increase for ICE means more detention camps and more masked agents in the streets

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published July 9, 2025 9:49AM (EDT)


(Salon) When the 9/11 Commission discovered that the plot to take down the World Trade Center had been suspected by various players in the country’s national security establishment but they had never shared the information with one another, it was decided that the system was in need of reform to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created a cabinet-level Director of National Intelligence to serve oversee and coordinate the 18 intelligence agencies, and established a new cabinet department to take charge of domestic security. Many of us knew that nothing good was going to come of that when they decided on the Orwellian title Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

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President Donald Trump‘s mass firing of government employees, intended to wreck the federal government, doesn’t hit DHS. In fact, under Trump’s One Big Boondoggle Act, which he signed into law on July 4, the department will receive a massive infusion of money. The $178 billion funding increase will pay for 10,000 new ICE agents, retention bonuses, immigration detention camps and military equipment, among other provisions. ICE’s funding is now larger than the FBI, DEA, ATF, Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service combined, and its detention funding is greater than the budget for the entire federal prison system. The legislation makes ICE and CPB the largest domestic police force in our nation’s history.

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This week we saw what a casual observer might have thought were military maneuvers in the middle of America’s second-largest city. Dressed in full battle gear, ICE, CBP, FBI and National Guard troops rolled through Los Angeles in military vehicles to take over downtown’s MacArthur Park. As it happened, there was virtually no one in the park except some kids who had been attending a summer day-camp. When the troops arrived, they were hustled away. The agents who were on foot and horseback marched from one end of the park to the other, apparently just to announce their presence with authority and intimidation.

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But DHS and its agencies are about to start swallowing a firehose full of money, and anyone who thinks this can’t eventually add up to something much more sinister than a “show of force” is naive. Homeland Security police forces have been given a green light to roll through the streets of America’s cities and towns like a conquering army. This may not yet fit the technical definition of a police state, but it’s sure beginning to look like one. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/09/how-178-billion-is-creating-a-police-state/