The High Cost of Fear: Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill…
Let’s get one thing straight: the billions of dollars allocated to ICE do not improve the quality of life for Americans; instead, they fund a targeted agenda designed to purge anyone who does not fit a narrow, gatekept image of the country. This broken system treats the United States like an exclusive social club where the administration dictates who’s in and who’s out. The current administration and the Republican members of Congress are transforming the American Dream into something unattainable through terror and fear. This is not America First.
Just ten years ago, ICE's annual budget was around $6 billion. Today, thanks to the big beautiful bill, ICE is the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency with $85 billion now at its disposal. In fact, if ICE were a military force, it would be the fifteenth most well-funded military in the world. The big, beautiful bill allocates more than $170 billion over four years for border security and immigration enforcement, with the goal of deporting one million immigrants each year. So far, this funding has sent thousands of unidentified, masked agents, cowards, into U.S. communities, opened inhumane detention centers, torn families apart, fueled racial profiling, and detained thousands of people, including U.S. citizens, in direct violation of the law.
I. The Economic Cost: Mass Deportation vs. Community Stability
When we break things down, the message becomes clear. The one “Big Beautiful Bill” appropriated $45 billion for detention centers, for the purpose of expanding detention capacity for single adults and families. The proposed goal for these inhumane detention centers is to hold up to 100,000 people in custody daily. The bill allocates $46.5 billion more for the construction and improvement of border wall systems. Things like AI surveillance technology that tracks human movement without human assistance. Then another $10 billion for a “reinforcement fund,” or grants provided to state and local governments to build their own walls and help relocate immigrants. If this isn’t alarming enough, ICE has been on a hiring spree, promising on-the-spot hiring where you could walk out with a $50,000 bonus (reported by investigative journalist Laura Jedeed). According to DHS, ICE received 220,000 applications just last year. The agency states that in just one year, it has more than doubled the number of officers and agents, from 10,000 to 22,000. This spike in applications is likely because, in addition to the signing bonus, they are also promising people $60,000 in student loan repayments.
Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? Well, here’s the real question: who is actually contributing to this country, and who are we choosing to invest in? A study from the American Immigration Council found that in 2023, undocumented households paid $89.8 billion in federal, state, and local taxes, and held $299 billion in spending power. This means that undocumented households, our neighbors, play a critical role in our economy, helping keep businesses open and money flowing back into our local economies. But we all know this. Immigrants hold over $6.6 trillion in wealth and make up nearly 16% of nurses and 28% of health aides in an industry facing severe labor shortages. The data does not lie. And it is clear that mass deportation is not the answer, nor is it America First. It hurts the economy, and it threatens to separate 4.1 million U.S. citizen children from their undocumented parents.
II. The Fight Continues Today
Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Good, Keith Porter, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Víctor Manuel Díaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz, Heber Sánchez Domínguez, Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres. Lives taken by the hands of ICE just last month. In 2025 alone, 32 deaths were reported in ICE custody. We know the system is fatal; we know this system is killing Americans.
We also know the system is unconstitutional. A recent UCLA study shows that only 19.4% of detained immigrants have legal representation. In recent news, four attorneys told ABC News that DHS denied them access to their clients at Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. DHS rejected these accusations, further proving to us that this $100 billion investment in ICE has only brought federal overreach, a massive expansion of the federal government, inhumane detention centers, and a system that takes no accountability. In fact, it has created an agency that seems to treat blatantly lying to the American people as par for the course.
As of February 1, 2026, due to the inadequate funding plan proposed in the Big Beautiful Bill, we have entered a partial government shutdown. Federal republicans are pushing to pass the six-bill spending package and allocate an additional $10.3 billion to ICE with no new standards or reforms to prevent abuse and future deaths. Without demanding a removal of their masks or even a requirement that they wear body-worn cameras. Without demanding any transparency or additional oversight.
And the fact is, the $100 billion investment in ICE could certainly have solved the immigration “problem.” But the real problem is how we choose to spend this money. Instead of hiring judges, building courtrooms, and hiring staff to process citizenship and residency applications, asylum applications, and refugee applications, we are simply spending all our money on enforcement, building concentration camps, and deploying a domestic military onto the streets of the United States to instill fear and chaos. A domestic military that apparently answers only to the president and that is not bothered by pesky details such as court orders or abiding by the Constitution.
III. Hitting Close to Home
For those who do not know, we already have five ICE detention facilities right here in Oklahoma. Recently, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt announced the blockage of the sixth location, just blocks away from Western Heights High School. I stand with Mayor Holt in stopping the expansion of ICE here in Oklahoma. I stand with my federal democrats in requiring accountability from ICE before it can get an additional dollar of your taxpayer money, in demanding body cameras and accountability. It is time to stop the campaign of fear and terror, perpetuated by masked, armed, poorly trained cowards.
Trump claims mass deportations are improving Americans’ quality of life. Separating families, deploying masked, underqualified agents, terrorizing streets, causing fear, targeting working families, children, and schools, detaining American citizens—this is improving the quality of our lives? How?! Children wonder if their parents will come home from work. Some children are even afraid to go to school. People are scared to leave their homes to go to the grocery store. This is not America First; it’s a targeted agenda designed to purge anyone who doesn’t fit the narrow image of this country. We must end funneling billions into this broken system and demand proper accountability, transparency, and oversight of ICE. Tom Cole has proven he won’t do either of these things. Instead, he chooses to follow cowardly, following an agenda that seeks to gatekeep America.
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Ice announces historic 120% manpower increase, thanks to recruitment campaign that brought in 12,000 officers and agents | homeland security, https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/03/ice-announces-historic-120-manpower-increase-thanks-recruitment-campaign-broughtNew Data: Immigrants Keep Economy Strong, as Congress considers wasting billions on mass deportation American Immigration Council (2025), https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/press-release/immigrants-keep-economy-strong-as-congress-debates-mass-deportation/ https://escholarship.org/content/qt7120h1c2/qt7120h1c2.pdf ABC News, https://abcnews.go.com/US/lawyers-allege-dept-homeland-security-denying-legal-counsel/story?id=129335914. 