In this op-ed for TIME Magazine, Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon reflects on the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis and the implications of a more expansive and aggressive authoritarian state for public safety in the United States. Below is an excerpt from the op-ed:
Right now, immigration enforcement is the most visible application. But the bigger picture is a federal police force capable of deploying anywhere in the country to carry out the president’s will, subsuming state and local law enforcement, and even taking over elections—in case anyone was wondering how the president might accomplish his goal of having Republicans “take over elections.”
Windfall funding was the first step. Last summer’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” contained a $175 billion cash infusion for ICE—by far the largest budget allocation for a law enforcement agency in history. To put this in perspective, the sum surpasses annual military spending for every country on the planet aside from the United States and China. It is also larger than the annual budgets for every state and local police department in the country combined (roughly $135 billion).
These funds enable hiring in the numbers necessary to effectively occupy cities. In Minneapolis, for example, federal agents easily surpassed the roughly 600 local officers on the ground. Because this force does not have to be evenly distributed across the country, they could outnumber state and local law enforcement everywhere they go. And, thanks to cooperation agreements that will give ICE more access to jails—and, again, possibly sensitive voter data—the reach of these agents will be longer than ever.
Read the full op-ed on TIME’s website.