Congress votes for $70 billion to further criminalize immigrants, but imagine if we spent that much money supporting immigrant families

Last week Congress voted to provide $70 billion more for for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. According to a story on NPR:

While most annual spending measures provide funds for just that fiscal year, this measure includes lump sums that need to be spent only by the end of fiscal year 2029, including:

• $38 billion for ICE to hire, pay, train and equip its officers and agents. That includes $7 billion for Homeland Security Investigations and $31 billion for immigration enforcement work like hiring more attorneys, supporting local law enforcement who coordinate with ICE and technology like body cameras;
• $22 billion for Border Patrol to pay, train, recruit and equip agents and personnel. That includes $13 billion specifically for immigration enforcement work;
• $5 billion for border security technology and screening, including artificial intelligence;
• $350 million for enforcement in localities that do not coordinate directly with ICE.

It is important to note that all of this money that is itemized here will be used to track, arrest, detain and deport immigrants, whether it goes to ICE and CBP agents, private contractors, local law enforcement and companies that make the equipment used by ICE and CBP.

What a radically imagined budget to support undocumented immigrants could look like

Now, the $70 billion for ICE and CBP are for the entire nation, so lets say that $2 billion could be used in Michigan, considering the size of the state, the level of ICE/CBP activity and what we know regarding ICE/CBP activity in the state.

$2 billion would cover the harm done by ICE/CBP in the last 12 months in Michigan, which would include the cost of family separation for thousands of families, legal fees spent to represent those arrested and detained, and Mutual Aid raised to provide ongoing support to families that have been impacted by ICE violence.

Of course, $2 billion – or any amount – would never be sufficient to cover the trauma caused by ICE/CBP against immigrant families living in Michigan.

$2 billion would also not adequately cover the cost of the time, energy and resources that countless individuals and autonomous groups spent engaged in resisting ICE through direct intervention, patrols, accompaniment, in meetings, demonstrations, marches, creating education materials, strategy sessions, all of which is precious time that people could have spent growing gardens, taking care of children, learning another language, dancing, cooking food, making art, making love, etc.

Another way of looking at $2 billion for Michigan would be if ICE and CBP were abolished and immigrants weren’t being terrorized, then $2 billion could be used for:

• Asylum application fees
• Providing affordable housing for immigrant families
• Making sure that immigrant families had excellent health care and education
• Providing seed money for immigrant families to start their own businesses
• Paying for language classes
• Providing translation services to the more than 100 different immigrant linguistic needs

If the US spent an equivalent amount of money we spend on terrorizing immigrants to support and welcome them, imagine how much better their lives would be. Hell, imagine how much better our lives would be, since immigrants already make our lives better.

Then there is the matter of how much money the US spends on military aid, training and weapons sales to countries that are using that money to repress their own people. Add to that how much US tax dollars are used to subsidize economic policies and corporations that devastate the local economies throughout countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Imagine if the US wasn’t spending billions on military and economic policies that displaces people throughout the Americas, thus creating the so-called immigration crisis in the first place. Imagine if people could remain peacefully in their country of origin, living healthy and joyful lives.

Imagine that another world is possible, that we don’t have to settle for what systems of power and oppression give us. As the great Puerto Rican poet, Martin Espada once said, “No change for the good ever happens without it being imagined first, even if that change seems hopeless or impossible in the present.”

Let us radically imagine a better world!