Republican lawmakers in Congress are advancing a budget plan that would add more federal dollars to some of President Donald Trump’s most talked about domestic priorities — including ramped up deportations and immigration detention.
A plan crafted by House Republicans could provide up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and a $4 trillion increase to the federal debt ceiling. It would also cut funding for social programs like Medicaid, and add an additional $90 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. A budget proposal from the Senate, meanwhile, would allocate $350 billion toward mass deportations and detention centers.
Jason Houser served as chief of staff at ICE under part of the Biden administration.
“ICE has 45,000 beds and change. No one has said that a need for more beds will equate to more border security — quite frankly — ICE has the resources in the way of detention,” he said.
Houser says rather than needing additional beds, ICE is facing issues that stem from a lack of comprehensive immigration reform. Houser said while he was with ICE, some agents were focused on special investigations.
“We had massive raids and investigations and arrests going after MS13 gangs in Louisiana, in Memphis, going after drug trafficking rings, we had multi-jurisdictional law enforcement operations in Baltimore going after the illicit gun trade,” he said.
Houser says the attention and money put toward mass deportations now is pulling resources away from those efforts.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona says it conducted more than 500 immigration-related prosecutions between Jan. 21 and Feb. 7.
The agency says its Arizona Division has conducted 565 prosecutions and more are related to border interdictions – meaning people who were arrested by Border Patrol agents and charged with unlawful entry.
A spokesperson for the division said that number is consistent with prosecution activity in Arizona over the last several years.
The number of apprehensions made by Border Patrol agents in the state was already in decline for the last several months of the Biden administration, and the most recent figures from Customs and Border Protection shows that trend has continued.
The spokesperson said additional federal personnel focused on internal immigration enforcement over the last several weeks has allowed other agencies to focus on arresting people facing criminal charges, like smugglers.
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The Arizona House of Representatives is close to passing a bill that would require hospitals to ask patients their citizenship status.
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It's been two months since President Donald Trump closed the door on asylum seekers. But a sliver of hope remains for those who have few options other than to wait in Mexico. -
Under the new rule, posted to the Federal Register Tuesday, nationals from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela who were given temporary protection and work permits under a Biden-era parole program will have that status revoked. More than 500,000 recipients have been given 30 days to leave the country themselves or face deportation. -
A memo from President Donald Trump directs the Justice Department to pursue sanctions or other disciplinary actions against attorneys and firms with immigration cases that the government deems unethical. -
It’s a roughly $200 million federal contract split by legal aid groups in Arizona and other states that allows attorneys to speak to and represent children after they’ve been released into shelter facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
