Significant Increase in ICE Funding

Indivisible.org Weekly Newsletter for Monday, July 7, 2025

The full, devastating impact of Trump’s Big Bullshit Bill (“BBB”) will not be felt for years, but some of the impact will be felt very soon.

Usually, I use these newsletter intros to give a general overview of the news of the week, but I want to zero in on one aspect of this bill that is, oddly enough, not in the news very much: the creation of an American Gestapo.

I do not think the media, political commentators, or the public at-large understand just how enormous and society-changing this part of the bill is. And I think it would be good for all of us to get real smart real fast on what’s coming soon to a community near you.

This is the part of the BBB that will become immediately visible. The drastic Medicaid and Food Stamp cuts largely don’t take effect until after the midterms, and the tax cuts for billionaires and corporations will be largely invisible to the public. But the American Gestapo is funded now — right now. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) annual budget balloons to $37.5 billion.

This makes ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the republic. To put this in perspective, here are the sizes of other federal law enforcement agencies, many of which have entire TV dramas devoted to them:

Why do they need all this funding? Simple. They want to take the terror and militarization that they brought to Los Angeles and do the same thing in communities around the country. They’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but they haven’t had the money. Now, they’ve got the money.

When does this money flow? Now. This means a hiring spree of 10,000 goons for Kristi Noem and Tom Homan, 100,000 new detention beds, and mega- detention camps around the country. My home state of Texas is already preparing for one mega-camp site.

I don’t know why the broader political and media ecosystems aren’t yet focused on this. There is almost an instinctual pivot to bland political analysis: “How is this going to affect the midterms?” But we can’t wait 16 months for the midterms to start pushing back against this federal overreach. We cannot afford to wait. We have to organize against this in our own communities.

We’ll be getting into this more on Thursday’s What’s the Plan with me and Leah. And next week, we’ll be kicking off our One Million Rising training series to coach up a million volunteers on how to productively, effectively, and as safely as possible engage in non-violent non-cooperation.

This was already a harrowing time to be organizing in defense of our democracy, and this bill only cranks up the threat level. But remember: they have no mandate for this agenda.

Americans do not want a national Gestapo terrorizing their communities. As much as Trump wants to appear all-powerful, he is an unpopular, lame-duck president who just signed into law the worst piece of legislation in modern American history.

And we don’t just have to sit back and take it. Instead, we choose to organize. So please read on for this week’s action items.

In solidarity,
Ezra Levin
Co-Executive Director
Indivisible