{"id":14600,"date":"2025-07-02T17:39:35","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14600"},"modified":"2025-07-02T17:39:35","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:39:35","slug":"how-to-turn-the-u-s-into-an-immigration-police-state-in-one-big-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=14600","title":{"rendered":"How to Turn the U.S. Into an Immigration Police State in One Big Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Medicaid cuts? Trillions in new debt? All immaterial, MAGA insists, as long as we get to jail the foreigners.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by William Kristol<\/strong><\/em>, THEBULWARK<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

United States of Alcatraz?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will July 1, 2025 be a date that will live in infamy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably not. There are too many competitors, too many other dates in recent months and years that have been signposts on our descent toward authoritarianism and indecency, too many other markers of national decline, for this one day to stand out all that much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, yesterday packed quite a one-two punch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Senate passed a massive budget reconciliation bill that stands out, probably more than any other recent piece of legislation, for comforting the very comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. \u201cLet\u2019s not kid ourselves,\u201d Alaska\u2019s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski hastened to say<\/a> after the bill passed. It\u2019s \u201cnot good enough\u201d for our nation, and it\u2019s the product of \u201can awful process\u2014a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course Murkowski told us this after having cast the deciding vote for the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to cutting health care for the poor and providing tax relief for the rich, the legislation provided massive funding increases for the federal agencies carrying out the Trump administration\u2019s anti-immigrant obsession. The bill adds<\/a> a total of $170.7 billion to immigration enforcement. It roughly triples<\/em> the annual detention and enforcement budgets for the masked men of Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the next four years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And according to our vice president, JD Vance, this was the point<\/a> of it all: \u201cEverything else\u2014the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy\u2014is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All those people losing health insurance? \u201cMinutiae.\u201d \u201cImmaterial.\u201d Mass detention and deportation are what matters. They\u2019re not only key to Making America Great Again, they\u2019re what it means<\/em> to Make America Great Again. That\u2019s the MAGA dream: Finally getting rid of all those foreigners seeking refuge and opportunity here, in our<\/em> land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And mass detention and deportation are also key to advancing the other point of it all: authoritarianism. That\u2019s the other part of the MAGA dream: Finally getting rid of all those annoying features of due process and the rule of law, all those restraints of civility and decency, that have kept us<\/em> from doing what we<\/em> want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, while his vice president was breaking the tied vote in the Senate, Donald Trump was celebrating a new detention facility in the Florida Everglades. It\u2019s a physical manifestation and apt symbol of the MAGA dream. How proud they all were of its clever name\u2014\u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d\u2014and the collection of tents filled with cages to hold immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name is of course unfair to the original Alcatraz<\/a>, a maximum-security, minimum-privilege penitentiary prison that operated from 1933 to 1963. That Alcatraz housed about 275 criminals convicted of serious crimes who were considered\u2014and in many cases, had proven themselves\u2014the most incorrigible inmates in the federal prison system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s version of Alcatraz isn\u2019t for a few hundred convicted and hardened criminals. It\u2019s meant to hold thousands of undocumented immigrants, most of whom will have committed no crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there won\u2019t be only one such facility. Trump was asked yesterday whether he wanted to see many more like it. His answer was straightforward: \u201cWell, I think we\u2019d like to see them in many states, really, many states. This one, I know [Florida Gov.] Ron [Desantis]\u2019s doing a second one, at least a second one, and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system where you\u2019re going to keep it for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Massive detention facilities for immigrants convicted of no crime en route to their deportation to places they may have never been to: That\u2019s the system Trump hopes we are going to keep for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alcatraz\u2014the real Alcatraz\u2014was something we needed or thought we needed. Even the best nations need prisons. So far as I know, American presidents didn\u2019t chortle about our prisons or hold them up as what America was all about. Alcatraz was an object of curiosity, a unique prison on an island in San Francisco Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The island American presidents once touted as what America was all about is on the other coast. It\u2019s called Liberty Island, and its most notable feature isn\u2019t a prison. It\u2019s been the home for almost a century and a half to a statue, the Statue of Liberty. Its official name is The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLiberty enlightening the world.\u201d How quaint. Do we still believe in that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After yesterday, let\u2019s not kid ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medicaid cuts? Trillions in new debt? All immaterial, MAGA insists, as long as we get to jail the foreigners. by William Kristol, THEBULWARK United States of Alcatraz? Will July 1, 2025 be a date that […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-slider"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14603,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14600\/revisions\/14603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}