The Vast, Terrifying Scale of Trump’s Detention State

For our November+December issue, we investigated the brutal rollout of President Donald Trump’s immigration police state: the surge in funding and manpower, the troubling arrests by masked agents, the increasing use of problematic tech, the incessant cruelty of the messaging, and the shadowy profiteers cashing in on the administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown. Read the whole package here.

When Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July, it opened a gusher of funding for President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. On top of $46.5 billion for border wall construction, the OBBB delivered $74.9 billion to ICE—double its entire budget under Joe Biden and more than the annual military spending of all but eight countries. Of that, $45 billion will go to establishing new detention centers, including 50 by year’s end, some of them tent camps in the style of the notorious Alligator Alcatraz. Nearly $30 billion will go to enforcement and deportation, which will enable ICE to go on an unprecedented hiring spree. And that, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) noted, “is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play.”

Not only has ICE’s budget skyrocketed past those of other federal law enforcement agencies, but the money is increasingly being handed out to contractors without first collecting competing bids.

Here’s a closer look at just how big the detention state has already gotten:

An infographic with six statistics about US immigration detention. Top left: “61,226 — Number of people in immigration detention in August, an ICE record.” Top right: “107,000 — Number of people ICE plans to be able to detain by the end of the year.” Middle left: “70% — Share of people in immigration detention in August who had no criminal convictions.” Middle right: “8,979 — Number of detention beds set aside for immigrant families by the end of the year.” Bottom left: “13 — Number of countries that agreed to take US deportees from a different country.” Bottom right: “1,214 — Number of ICE flights in July. Many cost $25,000 per hour.”

It’s not just that there’s more money to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. There’s also been a shift in the kinds of folks the feds are arresting—and where they’re being arrested.

As of September, there were 186 immigration detention centers in operation. Another 50 facilities were expected to open by the end of the year.

Trump’s OBBB would pay for 10,000 additional ICE agents over the next five years—nearly twice as many as are currently employed. As of August, 100,000 people had applied for the job. But a 2017 inspector general report found it takes 500,000 applicants to make 10,000 adequate hires.

And with its expanding workforce, ICE is planning to arrest more people, in more places, and in more problematic ways than ever before.

An infographic with four statistics about US deportations. Top left: “1 million — Number of people the White House aims to deport by year’s end.” Top right: “197,526 — Number deported as of August 25. At that rate, about 300,000 people would be deported by year’s end.” Bottom left: “52,079 — Number of children younger than 12 ordered removed through July. Nearly 44% were under the age of 5.” Bottom right: “822 — Number of law enforcement agencies that have signed 287(g) agreements. That’s six times the number at the end of the Biden era.”

This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.