Deep State Rolls Trump on Budget, Immigration. Is This the End?

John Derbyshire, The Unz Review, 23 March 2018

So Congress finally passed a budget. It’s a blockbuster—$1.3 trillion, or around four thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child in the U.S.A. Basically it is a compound made up of (a) anything Leftist Democrats could wish for, and (b) anything that the Jeb Bush wing of the Republican Party, and that wing’s Big Business donors (but I repeat myself), could wish for. But how about the things that sixty-three million of us voted for in 2016, awarding the Presidency to Donald Trump?

Border control? Enforcement of immigration law? An end to missionary wars and the World Policeman role? Economic and population policies that favor Americans rather than foreigners?

There has to be some of that in such a colossal budget, doesn’t there?

After all, Donald Trump is President, isn’t he? He signed off on this thing, doesn’t he?

Well, to be perfectly fair, if you apply a microscope to the budget bill’s two thousand-odd pages, you can find a teeny-tiny sort-of concession to Trumpism hidden in there among the gov-speranto.

There is, for example, $1.6 billion—one-eighth of one percent of the total budget—for border security, probably the single issue more than any other that brought voters out for Trump in 2016.

How will that $1.6 billion be spent? Congressional Republicans have told us it will be spent on, “replacement (of existing barriers), bollards, and levee improvements.” Congressional Democrats have told us that the money will not be used for any new concrete wall.[U.S. Congress unveils $1.3 trillion spending bill as shutdown looms, Reuters, March 21, 2018]

So—no wall, then. Those “prototypes” our President was inspecting in the southwestern desert the other day were merely what the late Senator Pat Moynihan called “boob bait for the bubbas.”

Got it. Probably those prototypes will still be standing out there in the desert a thousand years from now, testifying to the suicide of our nation, while round about them, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.

Twiddling the knobs on my microscope a little more, I see that there’s funding for DHS to hire 351 new Customs and Border Protection agents.

Not 350, please note, nor 352: just precisely 351. Let no-one accuse the Congressional drafting committees of imprecision.

Customs and Border Protection are the guys at our airports, seaports, and border posts. CBP has 60,000 employees, according to their website, so that 351 additional is better than a half of one percent.

Don’t you feel safer already?

And what about ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the guys who do the intelligence and muscle work—interior enforcement, workplace compliance, and deportation of illegals? Do they get 351 more agents? Or perhaps 263, or 155?

“Barely 100” is the best number I can find in the news reports. [Why Trump is threatening to veto the omnibus bill over immigration, By Dara Lind, Vox.com, March 23, 2018]

It is now in fact fashionable on the political Left to call for the outright abolition of ICE. [ICE deserves to be abolished, by Molly Roberts, Washington Post, March 13, 2018]

This is quite a recent development, which bears watching. The old commies at The Nation magazine got the ball rolling earlier this month with an article calling ICE “incompatible with democracy and human rights.”[It’s Time to Abolish ICE | A mass-deportation strike force is incompatible with democracy and human rights, By Sean McElwee, March 9, 2018] Now the cry is being raised all over the CultMarx-o-sphere: “Abolish ICE!”

If the Democrats pull off a congressional sweep in November, abolition of ICE will likely be high on their agenda. And that will be the end for interior enforcement of our immigration laws.

Read the entire article at The Unz Review.