Amna Nawaz:
So that increase in funding for ICE, for immigration enforcement, how unprecedented is that kind of increase?
Laura Barron – Lopez: Well, it’s incredibly unprecedented.
I spoke to David Bier, who is the director of immigration studies at the conservative Cato Institute. And David Bier said that the administration has already moved a significant number of ATF agents, of DEA agents over to help immigration enforcement. And now this bill will dramatically increase ICE’s capabilities on top of that.
David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies, Cato Institute: Under this bill, if — by 2028, you’re talking about spending effectively 80 percent of all federal law enforcement dollars will go to immigration enforcement.
And so when you think about the scale that we are prioritizing this type of enforcement over all other types of crimes, everything you can think of is being deprioritized to focus on deportations. And primarily it’s going to be deportations of people without any criminal record, without any arrest record.
Laura Barron – Lopez: So, as Bier said, law enforcement being moved from other types of operations, other — prioritizing other types of crimes to specifically focusing on immigration enforcement. And David Bier warned that the impact of this law will mean that ICE raids could very well become an everyday part of American life and hit communities that it hasn’t necessarily hit already.
He warned that he thinks there could be an increase of racial profiling, including of American citizens. And we have seen some American citizens get caught up in these ICE operations already, some arrested, some put in handcuffs, and he is concerned that that will only increase.
Now, another impact of this, according to David Bier’s and the Cato Institute’s number-crunching, and they did this by looking also at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Offices estimate, but that they estimate that the U.S., according — because of this bill, is going to lose some $900 billion in tax revenue that is paid by these immigrants who are potentially going to be picked up and deported by the administration.
