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Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” wouldn’t just force millions of poor people off their health insurance and food assistance to help pay for more tax cuts for the rich.
The Trump tax bill would steer tens of billions of dollars to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for detention capacity, employee bonuses, and to hire new agents. It would supercharge ICE’s ability to conduct raids, and allow the administration to expand the campaign of terror it’s waging on immigrants in Los Angeles to blue cities around the country.
ICE’s aggressive worksite raids and courthouse arrests throughout the Los Angeles area have, of course, inspired a wave of protests — giving the president an excuse to send the U.S. military to a Democratic city, something he’s long fantasized about, while inspiring demonstrations across the country.
“This bill would give Donald Trump the ability to do what he’s doing [in California] on a scale we really haven’t seen before,” says David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “He will be able to replicate this militarized approach to Los Angeles across maybe dozens of American cities.”
For Trump and key officials, including immigration-crackdown policy architect Stephen Miller, this is exactly the point, with Los Angeles currently being used as an autocratic staging area. They want to replicate this militarized, ramped-up blitz of ICE raids, backed by the U.S. armed forces, in several other Democratic strongholds — particularly if larger-scale protests spread to other cities.
As Rolling Stone previously reported, the president and his senior officials have already mapped out near-term plans for how to further ratchet up the already tense blitz of ICE operations, especially in the coming days in Los Angeles, where the federal agents are now being protected by Trump’s literal troop deployment to the city, against the wishes of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone that senior Trump administration officials are closely monitoring the situation in L.A. as a test case for what they want to do soon in places such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, or the Washington, D.C., area.
The key component to the strategy — which is being test-run on the streets of Southern California city — is the collaboration and armed protection of the U.S. military, which Trump, Miller, and others in the administration’s upper ranks have long wanted to aggressively wield in domestic raids and anti-immigration campaigns.
“If it works out well in L.A., expect it everywhere,” says a Trump administration official familiar with the operations and planning.
The American Prospect’s David Dayen notes that the Big Beautiful Bill would give “the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once,” adding: “if you see what’s happening in L.A., it’s coming to your town if the bill passes.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson tells Rolling Stone, “The Trump Administration is committed to fulfilling the president’s promise to deport illegal aliens and The One, Big, Beautiful, Bill plays a key role by funding at least 1 million removals, adding new ICE and border personnel, expanding detention capacity, and giving bonuses to hardworking Border Patrol and ICE agents.”
She adds that if other cities “allow violent rioters to attack federal law enforcement, President Trump won’t hesitate to step in to protect law enforcement when Democrats refuse.”
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations are not about targeting violent crime or gang members. According to The Wall Street Journal, Miller recently demanded that ICE “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” at places like Home Depot or 7-Eleven. The administration has also reportedly been directing immigration judges to dismiss pending immigration cases so ICE can then arrest the people involved at the courthouse.
Trump’s reconciliation bill, which passed the GOP-led House and is currently under consideration in the Republican-led Senate, would give $8 billion to ICE to hire at least 10,000 new employees over five years; $600 million to help hire and onboard those people; and $858 million for employee retention and signing bonuses.
The legislation would also provide $45 billion for detention capacity and family residential centers, over $14 billion for transportation and removal operations, $1.3 billion for information technology investments and facilities upgrades to support enforcement and removal operations.
Elsewhere, there is $1.3 billion in funds for lawyers to represent the Department of Homeland Security in removal proceedings, and another $3 billion “to house, transport, and supervise unaccompanied alien children.”
If Trump and his party get their way, it will be difficult for everyday citizens not to be affected by the broader immigration crackdown and round-ups.
“The average American will feel the effects of this bill in their daily life,” says Bier. “They will be expected to carry proof of citizenship and be subject to random harassment and interrogations. This will be like the U.S. border zone just moved inside the U.S. and the normal conduct of law enforcement will be suspended. Huge numbers of Americans will be arrested too, for resisting such intrusions.”
