The $350 Billion Budget That Builds Trump’s America

With Trump’s mass deportation slush fund advancing in Congress, working families—not just immigrants—stand to lose everything

This week, the House advanced a budget resolution that will gut essential programs to turbocharge Trump’s mass deportation agenda. The Senate’s version of the budget follows suit, opening the door for up to $350 billion in funding for mass removals, militarized communities, and state-sanctioned fear. This isn’t just a policy choice—it’s a live grenade that could determine the future of our communities.

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If adopted, this budget will devastate not just immigrant families but all working people. Medicaid, ACA benefits, Pell grants, and food assistance programs—lifelines for millions—are on the chopping block, sacrificed to fund Trump and Stephen Miller’s vision of an immigrant-less America. This budget forces every American to accept a devastating trade-off: fewer resources for education, children, and working families in exchange for raids in schools, churches, and hospitals and the military in their neighborhoods. Kids are afraid. Schools are seeing declining attendance. Parents are skipping doctor’s appointments out of fear. And still, Republicans push forward, indifferent to the human toll.

Next up, House and Senate Republicans must reconcile their conflicting budget resolutions, a process that will determine how far Trump’s mass deportation agenda can advance in Congress and how much of a fight Democratic lawmakers are willing to put up.

A Blank Check for State-Sanctioned Fear

As currently outlined, the budget hands billions to rogue state officials to expand Trump’s deportation machine, with Texas’s Operation Lone Star serving as the blueprint. Governor Abbott’s reckless operations have already drained state resources while leading to migrant deaths, law enforcement fatalities, and environmental destruction along the border. If the budget is adopted, federal reimbursements would fuel more of the same—more unchecked surveillance, more family separations, and more chaos under the guise of enforcement.

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has turned his already cruel immigration enforcement into a bounty system with the recently passed TRUMP Act, which incentivizes local officers to act as mercenaries against undocumented residents. Mississippi is poised to go even further, pushing legislation that would allow private citizens to play bounty hunters, encouraging racial profiling and state-sanctioned vigilantism. With billions in federal funding, states like Texas, Florida, and Mississippi will have the means to turn immigration enforcement into a free-for-all—no accountability, no oversight, no restraint.

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And as if that weren’t dystopian enough, reports surfaced this week that Trump allies are entertaining a draconian proposal from Erik Prince—a war profiteer notorious for human rights abuses across the globe. His vision? A network of internment camps and private militias deployed to execute mass deportations. The price tag: $25 billion—a staggering figure, yet only a fraction of the $350 billion Trump is demanding. If this is what $25 billion buys, what will 14 times the funding unleash?

A National Immigrant Registry—An Echo of the Worst Chapters in History

As the budget advances, Trump announced yet another escalation: the enforcement of a national immigrant registry. A government-mandated list of undocumented immigrants, a system designed not for public safety but for tracking, detaining, and disappearing people at will. This is not speculation—there is historical precedent. We’ve seen what happens when governments create lists of vulnerable communities. NSEERS, the post-9/11 registry that targeted Muslim, Arab, and South Asian immigrants, led to zero terrorism convictions but 14,000 individuals placed in deportation proceedings. Now, Trump wants to go even further, using a registry as a foundation for mass removals at an unprecedented scale.

Immigration Hub Co-Executive Director Beatriz Lopez responded to the news this week: “This registry is a chilling echo of the darkest chapters in world history. We have seen what happens when governments create lists of vulnerable communities—not to protect, but to track, detain, and disappear. This is not about public safety. It is not about security. It is mass surveillance with one purpose: to fuel Trump’s deportation machine at any cost. ”

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Already, we’ve seen ICE agents target job sites, homes, and even schools. We know exactly how this data will be used. It will not make us safer. It will not fix the immigration system. It is a direct pipeline to family separation, detention, and forced removals.

This Budget is a Test—Will Lawmakers Fail It?

This is not a budget. It’s a wishlist for the cruelest, richest people on earth. It’s clear the notion that President Trump is only going after criminals is nothing but a farce. The Trump administration is expanding who is deportable–including more than a million TPS holders, like the 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians who will no longer be able to participate in our labor force. President Trump threatened to deport 20 million immigrants – including Dreamers, TPS holders, farmworkers, millions of workers and families who help local economies thrive. This budget will hand his administration a blank check to deliver on this threat.

But it’s not a done deal. This week, Democrats finally started pushing back. According to NOTUS, House Democratic leadership is formally whipping votes against the latest GOP immigration bill—a critical shift from past hesitancy. At the same time, they have reintroduced the Dream and Promise Act, reviving a pathway to citizenship that Americans overwhelmingly support.

The American people want solutions, not mass deportations and gutted resources. The numbers are clear—most battleground voters favor a balanced immigration approach over Trump’s chaos. The question is whether Democrats will seize this moment or let a $350 billion deportation machine take shape. This isn’t just another policy fight. It’s a defining moment for America.