A shutdown won't stop ICE -- Congress built it that way - MR Online

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

68% : That changed dramatically when Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4. ICE now has $85 billion at its disposal-making it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in U.S. history.
65% : It was constructed over decades with bipartisan support. ICE was created in 2003 under George W. Bush as part of the post-9/11 "homeland security" apparatus-with broad Democratic backing.
61% : ICE's annual operating budget would now rank in the top 15th military budgets worldwide.
58% : Democrats in Congress have repeatedly funded ICE at requested levels, approved expansions of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), and rejected calls from their own base to abolish ICE when that demand surged in 2018.
58% : Even if regular appropriations lapse, ICE could sustain current or expanded operations for multiple years on that money alone.
57% : Add in ICE's base budget of around $10 billion, and the agency has nearly $29 billion on hand each year.
56% : The Big Beautiful Bill changed everything Ten years ago, ICE operated on less than $6 billion a year-a footnote compared to other agencies in the Department of Homeland Security.
54% : The Big Beautiful Bill deliberately structured ICE funding to be immune from the normal appropriations process and the ability of Congress to withhold money.
53% : The Big Beautiful Bill gave ICE a $75 billion supplement on top of its regular budget, broken down as follows: * $45 billion for expanding "detention capacity"-meaning new ICE prisons, including family detention centers where children can be held indefinitely alongside their parents.
51% : That's essentially triple what ICE operated on just two years ago.
49% : That gives the department more freedom to support ICE operations, not less. What this means The shutdown fight is largely symbolic when it comes to actually restraining ICE.
48% : It allowed ICE to turn local police into immigration agents.
46% : Third, another temporary funding deal would actually make things easier for ICE.
44% : But none of that touches the $75 billion war chest already in ICE's hands-and it doesn't undo the decades they spent helping build the very apparatus now terrorizing immigrant communities.
41% : Why a shutdown won't matter Senate Democrats are threatening to block the House-passed funding package over ICE's recent killings in Minneapolis-where federal immigration enforcement agents shot and killed Alex Pretti and, just weeks earlier, Renée Good as part of a wider Department of Homeland Security operation in the city.
32% : But even if the government shuts down on Saturday, ICE operations will continue largely unchanged for three reasons: * First, ICE agents are classified as "excepted" workers.
31% : The party that now expresses outrage at ICE killings in Minneapolis spent years normalizing the agency's existence and growth.
23% : As protests continue in Minneapolis following the killings of ICU nurse Alex Pretti and lesbian mom Renee Good, and with another government shutdown looming at the end of this week, many are asking whether Congress will finally put the brakes on ICE.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.