President Donald Trump boasted about the newly turbocharged Immigration and Customs Enforcement after the “Big Beautiful” bill funded his immigration crackdown to the tune of $170 billion.
“One of the most exciting parts of the ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ACT’ is that it includes ALL of the Funding and Resources that ICE needs to carry out the Largest Mass Deportation Operation in History,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday.
“Our Brave ICE Officers, who are under daily violent assault, will finally have the tools and support that they need,” the president added. “We will not let America become a Third World Country filled with Crime, failing Schools, collapsing Hospitals, and total Social Dysfunction.”
The bill, which Trump signed into law on the Fourth of July, sets aside $30 billion for ICE’s operations, $45 billion for detention centers, and nearly $50 billion to build a wall at the southern border.
Trump was able to push the sprawling, controversial piece of legislation through Congress despite concerns from Republicans and Democrats alike. It is projected to add more than $3 trillion to the national debt.
After the bill passed Congress, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sounded the alarm about the extent to which it would boost Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade.
“I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE,” she wrote on social media Thursday. “This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion—making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.”
“It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
Under Trump, the number of ICE arrests has skyrocketed, with the number of people held in immigration detention centers jumping 25 percent.
The crackdown has sparked blowback, such as the anti-ICE protests that have raged in Los Angeles over the last month.
As he signed the bill into law Friday, Trump mocked his critics for raising concerns about its effects, saying: “Oh, it’s dangerous. Oh, everybody’s going to die.”
“It’s actually just the opposite,” he continued. “Everybody is going to live. This is just the opposite.”
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