A letter by Erin Hollinden

Published locally and nationally (August 8, 2025)

The ways the Trump administration is spending our tax dollars are horrifying on many levels. One way is to build concentration camps to detain immigrants.

The Economic Policy Institute explains that the “Big Beautiful Bill” gave over $140 billion to ICE, up from $30 billion in the past. $45 billion is to build detention centers, up from $3.4 billion in the past. They will probably be built by Core Civic and Geo Group, both for-profit prison businesses.

Trump’s goal is to deport one million people per year for the next four years—up from 300,000 per year more recently. His plan includes incarcerating them without due process in places that will wreck the environment.

ICE will have 50% more money for detention centers than the entire US prison system. It will be the best-funded law enforcement agency in our country—possibly in any country. Trump has fired many inspectors general who would oversee this system.

The US is fast becoming a police state with a shocking level of surveillance and intrusion. ICE is now in schools, parks, hospitals, and grocery stores—often in unmarked cars, in plain clothes, and wearing masks. Stories of inhumane confinement conditions are commonplace—overcrowding, starvation, medical neglect, and refusal to allow detainees to contact family members.

And whom are they disappearing? Nexan Aroldo Asencio was in the process of becoming a citizen in Massachusetts when his three-year-old twins watched ICE agents cuff him and drag him from their home. He spent several nights on a bathroom floor with little food or water. Andrea Velez, a 32-year-old US citizen in LA, had just been dropped off for work. When her mother and sister saw her being kidnapped, they screamed for help to LAPD officers, who let ICE take her. Marcello Gomez Da Silva, an 18-year-old honors student who has been in the US since he was six, was on his way to volleyball practice when he was taken.

ICE’s own data show that 71.7% of detainees have no criminal records. Some of them are naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents, green card holders, refugees, asylees, and people with long-term nonimmigrant visas like students or temporary workers.

Illegality and immorality aside, this will ruin our economy and eliminate jobs for US-born workers too. One in five workers in America is an immigrant. If 4 million people are deported over four years, there will be 3.3 million fewer employed immigrants and 2.6 million fewer employed U.S.-born workers. In the construction industry alone, employment of US-born people will fall by 861,000, and immigrant employment will fall by 1.4 million. This will worsen housing shortages and increase inflation. And the deportations will eliminate half a million child care jobs.

Stop the fear-mongering, money-grubbing, and subversion of our constitution! Contact your legislators today and tell them we will not stand for this kind of outrageously expensive cruelty and blind bigotry. Write to them through their websites or call them at 202-224-3121.

–Published with the permission of the author.