A boot on the neck of the working class: The $16 billion footprint of Trump’s police state

As fascist war monger in chief, Donald Trump threatens cities like Chicago and Baltimore with military occupation, and billions of dollars are headed for an unprecedented expansion in domestic federal law enforcement hiring. 

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law by Trump earlier this year, allocates $16 billion to federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE, Customs & Border Patrol (CBP), and the Bureau of Prisons, just for staffing. This number doesn’t include weapons, vehicles, surveillance technology, and other equipment. 

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all on the chopping block, but the capitalist government made sure that its fascist domestic security force is well fed. 

The federal sector news site, Gov Exec, commented that this increase in spending “promise(s) to transform the component agencies into behemoths with prodigious and unparalleled reach” – a concerning prospect considering federal police have acted with greater and greater impunity every year since the Department of Homeland Security was founded in 2003. ICE plans to use its $8 billion to hire 10,000 more officers, while CPB will receive $4 billion to hire 8,500 more employees. These increases in domestic federal law enforcement funding are set to begin as Donald Trump has escalated his threatening rhetoric towards various U.S. cities. 

ICE, CBP, and others only serve to terrorize migrants and other working-class people. Moreover, these agencies serve as a vehicle to create a hardline pro-Trump domestic security force. Long story short, these agencies are the new gestapo. Eighteen thousand five hundred more federal law enforcement personnel just means 18,500 more fascists to wage a war of terror on the working class and oppressed people. 

Whether it is the prominent deportation cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Mahmoud Khalil – or the mass ICE terror raids in Los Angeles – federal law enforcement constantly wages war on the working class.

The banks and corporations that own the U.S. government have been in need of a scapegoat as economic conditions have declined domestically and their military grip has waned internationally. As unemployment rolls fill and the money of the U.S. working class is plundered through taxes to fund genocide in Palestine and war in Ukraine, the ruling class needs someone to blame. They need something to distract the masses from growing poverty and underemployment. 

“Illegal immigration” has served as that distraction, scapegoating Latine migrants who are simply seeking to feed their families. To continue the cycle of repression, the federal gestapo needs an influx of funds and storm troopers. That is exactly what the “Big Beautiful Bill” provides. 

Billionaires like Trump, Bezos, and Musk need to make sure the working class stays divided, afraid, and repressed. To that end, they will continue to deploy the military against multinational working-class cities and domestic federal police against immigrant workers and pro-Palestine activists – such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Mahmoud Khalil. 

The working class in the United States has to be prepared to mobilize and resist this rising tide of fascism. Profiteers in war and misery, people like Trump and the Koch Brothers, don’t want the working class to know that it actually has the power to fight back. 

With the right political will, the workers and oppressed people living in the United States can flood courthouses, stage mass sit-ins, and be a human blockade between ICE storm troopers and the people they target for deportation. 

If there was ever a time for this sort of working-class unity against fascist military and ICE intervention, it’s now.