The American Police State Is Here

The American Police State Is Here (The Bulwark)​

ICE is about to eclipse the FBI as America's most important law enforcement agency. That's bad. Super-duper bad.
Jonathan V. Last

1. ICE > Medicaid

While most people spent the budget fight fixated on health care policy, I suspect that in a year we will consider this legislation to be the moment that Trump created his own internal security apparatus: His goal is to have ICE supplant the FBI in national law enforcement.

This is a big deal. Because the FBI is a professionalized organization with strict standards and a well-defined mission while ICE is more or less a national brute squad.

The Trump administration realized that corrupting the FBI would be a tall order. So while they’re certainly trying to do that, they put most of their chips on a different number: Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power.

To understand this transformation, we’ll have to talk about both budgets and culture.
....
The FBI has long been the gold standard for law enforcement, worldwide. Why? It starts with the agents. If you want to be an FBI agent, you need a college degree and often a graduate degree, too. Lawyers, accountants, Ph.D.’s with language skills—those are your stereotypical FBI agents.

Then there’s the training. After being accepted to the FBI, new agents go to Quantico where they live, eat, and breathe training for twenty weeks. These aren’t forty-hour work weeks—it’s total immersion. Kind of like Basic Training in the Army. Except that Basic is only a ten-week course and the FBI keeps new agents for double that.

Finally, there’s the management structure. The FBI is nested within the Department of Justice, but it is a separate entity led by an independent director who in important respects operates outside the executive branch’s chain of command. While presidents nominate and the Senate confirms FBI directors, the position is not a normal political appointment—the FBI director is more like the chairman of the Fed. The director’s term is ten years, designed to span administrations, creating continuity and independence.

All of which combines to make the FBI as good as (or better than) any law enforcement organization anywhere in the world. And explains why it will be hard for Trump to corrupt.
....
2. ICE Also Does Catering

Before we get to ICE, I want to level-set on the size of the FBI: Its annual budget typically lives around $11 billion, which supports 13,662 special agents, 3,215 intelligence analysts, and 20,435 professional staff. To give you a sense of scale, that’s about a quarter of the entire budget for the Department of Justice each year.

Okay, now let’s move on to ICE.

---

Unlike the FBI, ICE is a relatively new agency. It was created in 2003 in the post-9/11 rush to centralize various federal functions and nested under the new Department of Homeland Security. It was, like many of those initiatives, poorly conceived and grandiosely funded.

Up until last year, ICE operated with an annual budget of $8 billion supporting roughly 20,000 employees.

The BBB represents a step change: The operational budget for ICE is projected to go to $11.29 billion in 2026 with an additional $29.85 billion layered on top of that spread out over the next few years for personnel expansion and then another $45 billion for ICE to spend on detention facilities. To put that in perspective, ICE’s annualized budget won’t just be bigger than the FBI’s. It will be bigger than the budget of the Israeli military.

The goal is 10,000 new ICE agents in three years.2
....
Within months, ICE will have twice as many agents as the FBI and will have its own huge and growing prison system (which it operates independently) as its masked and un-uniformed officers continue to snatch people off of the streets and mete out violence as they see fit.

These are competing law enforcement organizations. One of them is relatively committed to liberalism and the rule of law. The other is less scrupulous and more malleable.

And that’s the one which will be dominant in America just a few months from now.

What do you think is going to happen?"

Well, maybe we will get those committing crimes into prison instead of walking our streets.

I don't think most people realize just how outlandish the plan is for ICE. To put it in perspective, Per Google AI:
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) requested a total budget of $8.809 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2025 from the Department of Justice (DOJ):

• Salaries and Expenses: $8.549 billion
• Buildings and Facilities: $260 million, which includes funds for new construction, modernization, and repairs

The BOP has also been granted authority to spend $9 billion from a federal account, which includes a $617 million balance from the previous year, $8 billion in new appropriations, and $115 million in other budgetary resources. As of May 9, 2025, the BOP had obligated $5 billion of the total $9 billion.

At the same time, the BOP has frozen salaries and cut pay for most personnel: 23,000 federal prison workers are set to take pay cuts up to 25% next month and Under Budget Pressure, Bureau Of Prisons To Cut Halfway House Time. Meanwhile, the BAD (Bloated Atrocious Disaster) Law allocates $45 billion alone for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. This represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. It is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system and for an expected daily detention population of at least 116,000 non-citizens. That's 200+% of the entire federal prison population. Moreover, those facilities are 1) not up to the same standards as most county jails, 2) are mostly being contracted out to private, for-profit corporations (who just happened to be big Trump donors), and 3) are not based upon any criminal basis.

Did someone say, "concentration camps"? And who still thinks this is not a fascist enterprise?

How ICE’s massive cash infusion is poised to transform America (MSNBC)​

I fear we will be defeated in most of the early and intermediate struggles to come.

There is no way Trump masterminded this. Evil works through a fool. That evil is Stephen Miller.

Trump’s personal police force answering to a mad man. Dark, dark things will follow.

Do MAGAs approve? I’d like to think not.

Risky Thicket said:

There is no way Trump masterminded this. Evil works through a fool. That evil is Stephen Miller.

Trump’s personal police force answering to a mad man. Dark, dark things will follow.

Do MAGAs approve? I’d like to think not.

Click to expand...

Vought. Leo. Vance. The Family. The Kochs. Heritage. Many others. There are more than a few prophets and overseers, enough to get things done around and in spite of Taco Caesar.

Risky Thicket said:

There is no way Trump masterminded this. Evil works through a fool. That evil is Stephen Miller.

Trump’s personal police force answering to a mad man. Dark, dark things will follow.

Do MAGAs approve? I’d like to think not.

Click to expand...

All evidence so far is to the contrary. See my thread on Sadism as public policy.

Integrityrespec said:

Well, maybe we will get those committing crimes into prison instead of walking our streets.

Click to expand...

Or holding the office of President.

Dry run over the weekend, imo.

Integrityrespec said:

Well, maybe we will get those committing crimes into prison instead of walking our streets.

Click to expand...

I was going to nominate this as the stupidest comment of the day, but the cue was too long, mostly by your previous posts.

Allan said:

Or holding the office of President.

Click to expand...

This thing was set on its inevitable course when Reagan and North avoided accountabilty for Iran-Contra.

reinaert said:

This thing was set on its inevitable course when Reagan and North avoided accountabilty for Iran-Contra.

Click to expand...

I agree. It has been a constant theme over the last few Republican presidencies. But, Trump is dismantling the legal apparatus that proved too much for the other administrations.

Many more criminal indictments under Trump, Reagan and Nixon than under Obama, Clinton and Carter (Politifact)​

("there were roughly 142 people indicted in the three GOP presidents ... far more than the two under the Democrats.)

And, of course, Trump jumped the gun by being indicted (and convicted) before becoming President again.

NWRatCon said:

The FBI has long been the gold standard for law enforcement, worldwide. Why? It starts with the agents. If you want to be an FBI agent, you need a college degree and often a graduate degree, too. Lawyers, accountants, Ph.D.’s with language skills—those are your stereotypical FBI agents.

Click to expand...

Yes, we can definitely trust the FBI. As you say, they are the gold standard. Remember it was a well-educated FBI sniper with excellent language skills that shot Vicki Weaver in the head while she held her infant daughter. A small price to pay for enforcement of gun control. Then there was the parkland shooting where the FBI received a credible tip from a person close to the shooter. who provided explicit information about his gun ownership and his desire to kill people, but the "gold standard" didn't follow up on any of it, resulting in 17 people being killed. I'm not even going to get into FBI patriot act surveillance of the American people, or the FBI's incompetence at waco, the larry nassar case, the whitmer kidnapping plot, and many others.

Integrityrespec said:

Well, maybe we will get those committing crimes into prison instead of walking our streets.

Click to expand...

The US already has the world highest prison population.
How many people do you want in prison and will you be shocked when they dont emerge as model citizens after they're treated like shit as they are in US for profit prisons.

aociswundumho said:

Yes, we can definitely trust the FBI. As you say, they are the gold standard. Remember it was a well-educated FBI sniper with excellent language skills that shot Vicki Weaver in the head while she held her infant daughter. A small price to pay for enforcement of gun control. Then there was the parkland shooting where the FBI received a credible tip from a person close to the shooter. who provided explicit information about his gun ownership and his desire to kill people, but the "gold standard" didn't follow up on any of it, resulting in 17 people being killed. I'm not even going to get into FBI patriot act surveillance of the American people, or the FBI's incompetence at waco, the larry nassar case, the whitmer kidnapping plot, and many others.

Click to expand...

That's a fine bit of cherry picking.

Integrityrespec said:

Well, maybe we will get those committing crimes into prison instead of walking our streets.

Click to expand...

In just the last couple days, one got himself killed for trying to kill an ICE agent and 10 others have been charged with attempted murder.

These attacks on ICE agents are insane and if they keep going, there will be many more facing similar scenarios as these 11.

Allan said:

That's a fine bit of cherry picking.

Click to expand...

It's enough to put the gold standard claim in the dumpster.

NWRatCon said:

ICE is about to eclipse the FBI as America's most important law enforcement agency. That's bad. Super-duper bad.

Click to expand...

That is, perhaps, true...but it's not bad. It's a shame that it has to be this way.

It's a shame that previous presidential administrations either ignored the illegal aliens coming into our country or aided their coming. It's a shame the Biden pukes supercharged their aid for four years and pretty much doubled the number of illegal aliens in our country.

And, it's a shame that only one man has accepted the responsibility...and has the courage...to do something about it.

aociswundumho said:

It's enough to put the gold standard claim in the dumpster.

Click to expand...

You need more than a dozen anecdotes when talking about 40,000+ people agency.

NWRatCon said:

The American Police State Is Here (The Bulwark)​

ICE is about to eclipse the FBI as America's most important law enforcement agency. That's bad. Super-duper bad.
Jonathan V. Last

1. ICE > Medicaid

While most people spent the budget fight fixated on health care policy, I suspect that in a year we will consider this legislation to be the moment that Trump created his own internal security apparatus: His goal is to have ICE supplant the FBI in national law enforcement.

This is a big deal. Because the FBI is a professionalized organization with strict standards and a well-defined mission while ICE is more or less a national brute squad.

The Trump administration realized that corrupting the FBI would be a tall order. So while they’re certainly trying to do that, they put most of their chips on a different number: Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power.

To understand this transformation, we’ll have to talk about both budgets and culture.
....
The FBI has long been the gold standard for law enforcement, worldwide. Why? It starts with the agents. If you want to be an FBI agent, you need a college degree and often a graduate degree, too. Lawyers, accountants, Ph.D.’s with language skills—those are your stereotypical FBI agents.

Then there’s the training. After being accepted to the FBI, new agents go to Quantico where they live, eat, and breathe training for twenty weeks. These aren’t forty-hour work weeks—it’s total immersion. Kind of like Basic Training in the Army. Except that Basic is only a ten-week course and the FBI keeps new agents for double that.

Finally, there’s the management structure. The FBI is nested within the Department of Justice, but it is a separate entity led by an independent director who in important respects operates outside the executive branch’s chain of command. While presidents nominate and the Senate confirms FBI directors, the position is not a normal political appointment—the FBI director is more like the chairman of the Fed. The director’s term is ten years, designed to span administrations, creating continuity and independence.

All of which combines to make the FBI as good as (or better than) any law enforcement organization anywhere in the world. And explains why it will be hard for Trump to corrupt.
....
2. ICE Also Does Catering

Before we get to ICE, I want to level-set on the size of the FBI: Its annual budget typically lives around $11 billion, which supports 13,662 special agents, 3,215 intelligence analysts, and 20,435 professional staff. To give you a sense of scale, that’s about a quarter of the entire budget for the Department of Justice each year.

Okay, now let’s move on to ICE.

---

Unlike the FBI, ICE is a relatively new agency. It was created in 2003 in the post-9/11 rush to centralize various federal functions and nested under the new Department of Homeland Security. It was, like many of those initiatives, poorly conceived and grandiosely funded.

Up until last year, ICE operated with an annual budget of $8 billion supporting roughly 20,000 employees.

The BBB represents a step change: The operational budget for ICE is projected to go to $11.29 billion in 2026 with an additional $29.85 billion layered on top of that spread out over the next few years for personnel expansion and then another $45 billion for ICE to spend on detention facilities. To put that in perspective, ICE’s annualized budget won’t just be bigger than the FBI’s. It will be bigger than the budget of the Israeli military.

Click to expand...

That does not sound good. Not good at all.

I know some brown skinned people. It is absurd they feel they should carry their passport around with them at all times, but that is the reality. Right here in America. We need to remain united against this police state.

Risky Thicket said:

There is no way Trump masterminded this. Evil works through a fool. That evil is Stephen Miller.

Trump’s personal police force answering to a mad man. Dark, dark things will follow.

Do MAGAs approve? I’d like to think not.

Click to expand...

It's Miller and the other subhuman scum from the Hertigage foundation like Kevin Roberts and his ilk.

NWRatCon said:

I don't think most people realize just how outlandish the plan is for ICE. To put it in perspective, Per Google AI:
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) requested a total budget of $8.809 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2025 from the Department of Justice (DOJ):

• Salaries and Expenses: $8.549 billion
• Buildings and Facilities: $260 million, which includes funds for new construction, modernization, and repairs

The BOP has also been granted authority to spend $9 billion from a federal account, which includes a $617 million balance from the previous year, $8 billion in new appropriations, and $115 million in other budgetary resources. As of May 9, 2025, the BOP had obligated $5 billion of the total $9 billion.

At the same time, the BOP has frozen salaries and cut pay for most personnel: 23,000 federal prison workers are set to take pay cuts up to 25% next month and Under Budget Pressure, Bureau Of Prisons To Cut Halfway House Time. Meanwhile, the BAD (Bloated Atrocious Disaster) Law allocates $45 billion alone for building new immigration detention centers, including family detention facilities. This represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. It is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system and for an expected daily detention population of at least 116,000 non-citizens. That's 200+% of the entire federal prison population. Moreover, those facilities are 1) not up to the same standards as most county jails, 2) are mostly being contracted out to private, for-profit corporations (who just happened to be big Trump donors), and 3) are not based upon any criminal basis.

Did someone say, "concentration camps"? And who still thinks this is not a fascist enterprise?

How ICE’s massive cash infusion is poised to transform America (MSNBC)​

Click to expand...

ICE must've really done something bad to you to make such dire predictions about an organization working to enforce federal immigration laws.

Are you writing an endless Atlantic Magazine article that goes on forever?

Peacenik said:

That does not sound good. Not good at all.

I know some brown skinned people. It is absurd they feel they should carry their passport around with them at all times, but that is the reality. Right here in America. We need to remain united against this police state.

Click to expand...

Now you have me worried. I am white and part Hispanic. DO you think I should carry my passport in case I am stopped on the street? I like Mexican food and going to Cinco de Mayo celebrations.
Is that a high risk social move on my part?

Mycroft said:

That is, perhaps, true...but it's not bad. It's a shame that it has to be this way.

It's a shame that previous presidential administrations either ignored the illegal aliens coming into our country or aided their coming. It's a shame the Biden pukes supercharged their aid for four years and pretty much doubled the number of illegal aliens in our country.

And, it's a shame that only one man has accepted the responsibility...and has the courage...to do something about it.

Click to expand...

So, Mycroft, what do you suppose will happen to all those ICE personnel and all that equipment and all that budget once all the illegal immigrants are rounded up? That's supposed to happen in a year or so. Will all that be dispersed or given other work to do?

Integrityrespec said:

Well, maybe we will get those committing crimes into prison instead of walking our streets.

Click to expand...

ICE has nothing to do with people violent committing crimes.... They are, in essence, traffic cops in their mission, as entering the US illegally is a misdemeanor, and generally a victimless crime.