Congress Defunds ICE, Opens Door for Migrant Wave

by Neil Munro / Breitbart News

Congress has agreed to shrink funding and detention beds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), just as pro-migration groups are warning that a wave of wage-cutting economic migrants will rush north to exploit President-elect Joe Biden’s pro-migration campaign promises.

“Democrats are bragging that they are cutting ICE funding,” said Rosemary Jenks, director of government relations at NumbersUSA. “They are bragging about making our communities less safe,” she added.

Congress chopped the ICE budget by $107 million below the 2020 level after rejecting a request by outgoing President Donald Trump’s for a $2 billion budget increase.

The cuts will pressure the agency to restart the catch-and-release of economic migrants in 2021, once the number of migrants overwhelms the agency’s reduced budget for detention spaces.

“The bill funds 34,000 detention beds, which is 26,000 beds less than the President’s budget request and 11,274 less than fiscal year 2020,” said a press statement from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the top Democrat on the spending panel.

If ICE does not have enough detention beds, it must release the migrants into the United States, where they will take jobs from Americans to repay their smuggling loans. The loans often use family farms and homes as collateral, putting migrants under extreme pressure to work for wages far below Americans’ levels. This profitable economic process spiked the number of migrants from low levels in 2009 to almost one million in 2019.

“If there is a perception of more-humane policies, you are likely to see an increase of arrivals at the border,” T. Alexander Aleinikoff, the director of the New York-based Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, told the New York Times for a December 13 report, titled “As Biden Prepares to Take Office, a New Rush at the Border.”

Democrats also won extra funding for a non-detention program that allows migrants to take jobs from Americans — typically, from American parents with kids, unfirm or disabled Americans, and Americans with criminal records. “The bill includes $440 million for Alternatives to Detention (ATD), which is approximately $86 million more than the President’s budget request and $120 million more than fiscal year 2020,” said Leahy.

But the ATD spending does create jobs for Democratic political activists under a new $5 million provision allowing the Department of Homeland Security to delegate criminal law enforcement activists to Democrat-aligned political groups. The bill requires “ICE to consider enrollment referrals for the ATD program from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and community partners,” according to Leahy’s statement.

The legislation also attacks the financial stability of the private prison industry by allowing the government to cancel contracts that fail agency inspections. The sector is vital to border enforcement because it allows border agencies to detain surges of migrants before they can get jobs in Americans’ workplaces.

Leahy’s statement does not mention any spending to help deter economic migration into Americans’ jobs or to forcibly return migrants to their home countries once their appeals for asylum are denied after years of legal hearings.

Under Trump, federal officials fought bipartisan pressure for the cross-border arrival of blue-collar migrants, so helping to raise median family income by seven percent in 2019. Trump’s deputies temporarily won the fight by early 2020, despite massive resistance from the establishment media, both parties, business, and Hollywood.

But Trump’s push to protect Americans’ labor rights helped solidify the quiet alliance between progressives, companies, and Wall Street investors, all of whom gain from a growing number of migrant workers, shoppers, and renters. […]

---