MAGA’s Budget Sacrifices NC Families for Deportation Raids

The MAGA Republican budget is bad for a lot of reasons. It raises costs for working families, cuts funding for food assistance, and is estimated to take health insurance away from over 600,000 North Carolinians– all while giving massive tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. 

The MAGA Republican budget is troubling for what it defunds, but what it funds is just as concerning. This week, we’ll take a look at how it turbocharges Trump’s cruel and unpopular mass deportation agenda. 

Trump’s Agenda– Chaotic, Cruel, and Unconstitutional

Trump has ordered a nationwide campaign to arrest undocumented immigrants, regardless of their criminal background (or lack thereof), their contributions to their community, or the circumstances that brought them to the United States. 

He has vowed to deport millions of people, executing raids at work sites and other sensitive locations, including farms that were largely exempted from enforcement during his first term. In Charlotte, ICE has staged operations at a church and a school car line. 

Lawful residents and US citizens have been deported, including a young child sick with cancer. People have been separated from their families and deported to countries that they have no ties to. People are dying in ICE custody at record numbers. And when the courts have attempted to check Trump’s deportation policies, he has responded by openly defying their orders.  

The Trump administration performs discriminatory raids indiscriminately. By going after families, neighbors, and essential workers, they’re creating chaos and disrupting peaceful communities. And the public is growing increasingly tired of it. 

North Carolina Doesn’t Support This Agenda

According to a recent Gallup poll, only 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration. 79% now say immigration is a good thing for the country– a record high. A Reuters/Ipsos poll shows similar results, with Trump’s immigration approval rating falling to 41%, the lowest since his return to the White House. Even Republicans are beginning to turn against Trump’s use of workplace raids and military tactics. 

North Carolinians agree that Trump’s immigration agenda has gone too far. A recent Catawba-YouGov poll shows that among Independents, Trump has a -12 net confidence in his ability to handle immigration issues, and -11 net confidence in his ability to handle deportations. 

The MAGA Budget Furthers This Unpopular Agenda

Republicans set aside over $170 billion for immigration enforcement, including $75 billion in extra funding for ICE, making it by far the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency. 

The Department of Homeland Security has said that this extra funding will be used to quickly hire 10,000 new agents– a massive endeavor that will likely require that ICE lower their hiring and training standards. The funding will also be used to rapidly double ICE’s detention capacity– expanding a system already prone to medical neglect, poor sanitation, lack of food, and overcrowding. They’re essentially adding more beds to centers that already don’t have the capacity to take people in.  

And with more funding comes higher deportation quotas– more people deprived of due process, more mistakes being made, more chaos in peaceful communities, more families torn apart.  

The Everyday Impact

The Cato Institute estimates that mass deportations will add almost $1 trillion in costs to the MAGA budget. ICE now has a bigger budget than the FBI and the DEA. It’s also projected to have more funding than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, and FEMA. 

All this money has to come from somewhere. And right now it’s coming from essential programs like Medicaid and SNAP. It’s coming at the expense of crucial government agencies. At the end of the day, it’s coming directly from you. 

This means slower processing of your tax refund. It means severely delayed or reduced support for communities recovering from natural disasters, such as those throughout western North Carolina. It means fewer vaccines in arms, more pollution in the air, and less clean water. 

It means higher costs across the board— for electricity, for health care, for groceries. It means less food on the table for working class families. It means taking away health insurance from millions of Americans. It means tearing families apart. 

Right now, we’re all stuck with the bill for MAGA’s cruel mass deportation agenda. But next November, we need to ensure that MAGA Republicans are the ones paying the price at the ballot box.