Let’s Fund Real Public Safety, Not ICE

We should be funding schools, health care, and education, not $50,000 signing bonuses for ICE agents.

By Sonali Kolhatkar, OtherWords

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a recruitment message on social media this summer saying, “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.”

Setting aside the racist overtones of this messaging, even DHS itself says it’s not true. Border crossings have fallen to an all-time low — DHS’s own website boasts about it. Moreover, federal data shows undocumented people have lower rates of criminal convictions than U.S.-born citizens.

Yet immigration enforcement has dramatically ramped up. Starting this summer, the Trump administration began deploying masked, flak-jacketed men wearing military fatigues sporting the word “Police” against low-income communities of color in immigrant-heavy Southern California and elsewhere.

Some people have exhorted city police to protect people from ICE agents, but evidence abounds of local law enforcement collaborating with ICE. And ICE has routinely posed as local law enforcement in order to gain entry into workplaces and people’s homes.

This is no surprise — ICE agents are essentially federal police officers. The Trump administration has also unleashed police and ICE agents on the nation’s capital, citing high crime rates as justification. But like immigration, violent crime has fallen nationwide, especially in Washington, D.C.

Among ICE’s favored targets in D.C. are delivery drivers — not exactly fitting the profile of dangerous criminals. Police officers have been documented conducting traffic stops while ICE agents check immigration status and then make arrests.

Given all this, it’s disturbing that DHS is offering potential ICE recruits a $50,000 signing bonus — and often hiring people on the spot at job fairs.

Imagine public school teachers, librarians, nurses, or child care workers being offered $50,000 bonuses and on-the-spot hiring. If there’s a bottomless well of taxpayer funds for waging war on people, there ought to be plenty of money to spend in service of them.

Instead, Republicans have consistently chosen policing over real public safety. But not only Republicans. As policing expert Alex Vitale pointed out in Current Affairs, “Democratic politicians have leaned into a conservative law-and-order politics that has been a key enabler of Trump’s return to power and his current dictatorial moves.” Both parties are to blame, albeit to varying degrees.

When racial justice activists in 2020 popularized the slogan “Defund the Police,” establishment media and politicians, including liberal ones, roundly criticized them. But the flip side of that incendiary call was a demand to fund institutions and systems that truly promote public safety: housing, healthcare, education, and more.

Similarly, when antiwar activists for years — going at least as far back as the Iraq war — called for “Money for Schools, Not for War,” they were making the equation that the war machine sucks up resources that ought to fund the public good.

Now, with the hyper-expansion of funding for immigration enforcement — which comes at the expense of Medicaid, SNAP, and other constructive programs — that demand is more relevant and necessary than ever.

Lawmakers have always carved out funding for policing, the Pentagon, and agencies like ICE while claiming there isn’t enough to fund health care, education, child care, elder care, and more.

Isn’t it time we flipped our priorities?

Sonali Kolhatkar is host and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, an independent, subscriber-based syndicated TV and radio show. She’s an award winning journalist and author of Talking About Abolition: A Police Free World is Possible, and Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.