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    Home»Opinions»Opinion | Trump’s $170 Billion Surveillance Machine
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    Opinion | Trump’s $170 Billion Surveillance Machine

    Team_Benjamin Franklin InstituteBy Team_Benjamin Franklin InstituteJanuary 24, 2026No Comments3 Mins Read
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    You wrote something that I think has really stuck in my head all year, that after the O.B.B.B.A., the amount of money going to domestic immigration enforcement is larger than the budgets of any military in the world, save the U.S. or China. And in addition to worrying about that on behalf of immigrants, when you think about these questions like surveillance, when you think about how Trump talks about domestic opposition, how Stephen Miller talks about domestic opposition, I think something that I fear that I see, I would say the shadows of but I think it’s actually much more visible than that, is an infrastructure that could be turned against all kinds of internal targets: political opposition, media, protesters, anybody they don’t like. When you think about the surveillance, when you think about, which we’ll talk about in a minute, the dramatic increase in detention centers, what does that look like? The money is so staggering that — and unprecedented — that we don’t have an image in the past that we can look to to try to guess where all of this is going. But as you pointed out, it’s a military-size budget, and it’s leading to physical changes to the country, large detention centers that are already starting to grow, to spring up, and that the administration wants to dramatically increase boots on the ground in American cities, armed officers who are questioning people, asking for proof of citizenship, accosting them, who are hostile to protesters, and anybody willing to question their work. Although I think it’s important to acknowledge that it’s not typical, the level of pushback that law enforcement is facing in the streets, either. I think they are facing an unprecedented level of challenge to their work, and all of that is contributing to the conflicts that we’re seeing and the chaos that we’re seeing. I think it just looks like a very different country than we’re used to. I mean, we’re starting to see what that image is. We can see it on social media and on the videos that have gone viral. So far, though, most of those incidents are relatively isolated. Most of the country can look at those videos and say: Wow, that looks really scary, but then walk outside their front door and go to work and mostly have the same experience that they were used to prior. I think those videos are going to become the reality more and more in American communities, because the money is there. As you said, the mission is there, the mandate is there, the money is there. One of the only checks that remains are the federal courts. And we are seeing significant challenges in federal court to some of what the Trump administration is trying to do. But the courts are hanging on their own right now as a check. Congress has been quiet other than to fund this massive expansion. So I really think that we’re looking at a reality with this $170-plus billion for immigration enforcement that involves armed law enforcement in the streets as a regular fixture of our lives, of chaotic conflicts in the streets as something that we’re going to become accustomed to and massive detention centers that are going to come up and that are going to be built for the purposes of holding people and then getting them out of the country.



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