we can make different choices: the ice budget and what it reveals

posted on Jan 31, 2026

danny caballero

Each day, I find myself bombarded with the consequences of having a twice impeached, criminally charged and convicted felon as president. The constant lies, corruption, grifting, and incompetence are exhausting. There’s simply too much to list, but I want to present one of the most recent pieces of data.

Here is a plot of the budget that our government has allocated to ICE over the last several years.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1qqgm7z/oc_ices_budget_has_surged_under_trump_to_become/

It’s obvious what the implications of increasing the budget of ICE to rival the Israeli military are. It means more detention centers, more family separations, more deportations, and more suffering for everyone involved. Recently, it has meant that two American citizens (Renée Good and Alex Pretti) were murdered, no, Danny, use more precise language. Renée and Alex were executed in broad daylight by ICE agents in Minneapolis.

And yes, this is a direct consequence of the choices made by our current administration and the choices we made as a country in electing them.

But here’s what keeps me up at night: a significant portion of my fellow citizens do not see this as a consequence at all.

They see it as necessary. They see it as protection. They’ve been told a story and they believe it. They believe that migrants are “invaders.” They believe that ICE is “securing our border.” They believe that the murders of Renée and Alex were justified, or that they didn’t happen the way I’m describing them, or that they happened but it was an unfortunate cost of “order.”

That story did not emerge by accident.

the machinery of the lie

About 37% of Americans appear unwilling to change their minds, no matter what data you show them. That number haunts me. Because those 37% aren’t stupid. They’re not evil. They’ve been isolated in a carefully constructed information ecosystem designed to keep them isolated. We learned the evils of this isolation in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Guy Montag’s journey to enlightenment begins when he questions the very information ecosystem he’s been placed in. Guy’s freedom comes when he breaks the isolation and connects with others - including Clarisse, Faber, and, I would argue, even Captain Beatty.

But this goes back much further than Trump. I’ll start in 1987, when President Ronald Reagan (obligatory: fuck that guy) and the wealthy pushed Reagan’s FCC to remove the Fairness Doctrine. Prior to 1987, broadcasters we required to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner that was honest, equitable, and balanced. Its removal allowed for the development of siloed media outlets that cater to a specific political ideology. Division was engineered.

Fast forward to Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which has allowed a flood of private money into our elections. By treating corporate and union spending as protected political expression, the Court effectively embraced the idea that money is speech. Clearly that disenfranchises that vast majority of Americans because billionaires and corporate actors are now free to manipulate our political system and thus our government to their benefit. If money is speech and corporations are people, then Amazon or ExxonMobil or Goldman Sachs have more of a voice than you or me.

Now, the cruel joke is that they always have. But Citizens United made it explicit and legal.

The rules now make it incredibly difficult to determine who funds these campaigns. Dark money spending in 2024 hit nearly $2 billion, with most of it supporting conservative candidates and causes. But this is bipartisan. Some Democrats have lost their way on this. As I’ve said before, want a good stock tip? Invest in the same companies that Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell do.

This isolation has only been exacerbated by platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Both explicitly optimize their recommendation systems to maximize watch time, learning which clips keep each user on their phone and then feeding them more of the same. Large-scale audits of YouTube’s algorithm show that it tends to deliver ideologically congenial content. And there is always an increasing share of videos from more extreme or conspiratorial channels further down the recommendation trail. TikTok’s “For You” feed similarly builds individualized content bubbles or “information cocoons” tailored to users’ existing interests.

Other countries have already begun testing these designs in court: for example, families in Europe have sued TikTok, alleging that its algorithm repeatedly promoted self-harm and suicide content to their teenage children and that this design contributed to serious harm. In the context of the war in Gaza, critics argue that whoever controls TikTok’s recommendation levers can effectively tilt the U.S. information environment. With TikTok being served by US billionaires loyal to the president, we are already seeing censorship in a variety of areas sensitive to the current administration.

These aren’t bugs; they’re features. Engagement is profit. And manipulating your views through designed attention algorithms is by design.

Why is the news on 24 hours a day? Because we watch it. Because advertisers pay for it. Because it’s not about informing you. It’s about keeping your eyes on the screen and your blood pressure elevated. Our media consumption is a commodity.

The same logic applies to Netflix, to Instagram, to X/Twitter. Why does Netflix keep putting out terrible content? Because they want to keep you on the platform. They want to keep you watching, so you continue to pay for the service. Paris Marx has traced this “enshittification” in detail. It is the systematic degradation of services in order to extract maximum profit before abandonment. For Christ’s sake, they are platforming podcasts as Netflix shows now.

Content quality is irrelevant. User experience is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is engagement time and keeping you from understanding what’s actually happening in the world. It’s easier to make money off your distraction than your awareness.

It isn’t accidental. It is engineered.

the inversion of morality

But the machinery is only part of the story. The inversion of moral language itself is equally important.

In George Orwell’s 1984, the totalitarian regime uses doublethink where citizens must hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. They say “War is Peace” while waging a perpetual war. They say “Freedom is Slavery” while clearly enslaving the population. They say “Ignorance is Strength” while keeping people deliberately ignorant and keeping them from recognizing their own strength.

We’re watching the same inversion happen in real time.

It’s like Stephen Miller read Orwell as a how-to manual not the warning it was meant to be. Here are three examples of our current administration’s doublethink and moral inversion.

“Family separation is security.”

The administration frames the ICE budget increase as “border security,” but what it actually funds is the ripping of children from their parents’ arms. Renée Good and Alex Pretti died trying to witness and resist this. The 37% have been told that this is necessary. They’ve been told that these are “dangerous criminals” and “invaders.” They don’t question the simple fact that Renée and Alex were American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights who were brutally executed by agents of our government. They don’t understand that the vast majority of border-crossers are fleeing violence and poverty, not invading anything. They don’t know their own history.

“Christian values require ICE raids.”

In my post “jesus would be in minneapolis,” I traced my understanding of the teachings of Jesus to express radical inclusion, to center the poor and marginalized, and to confront injustice. These teaching have been inverted into a Christian nationalism that uses the language of faith to bless police violence and deportations. Research from PRRI shows that Christian nationalism is the strongest predictor of support for Trump, stronger than party identification. The 37% have been told that to be a good Christian is to stand with ICE. They’ve been isolated from the Gospel and have had their faith corrupted by misinformation and bad actors.

“This is what the people want.”

Tom Barrett, my congressman, has not once engaged with constituents about the ICE budget, about the murders in Minneapolis, or about the catastrophic cuts to federal funding for universities in his district. He sends form letters about veterans and small business while ignoring the fundamental questions. His silence isn’t an accident; it’s strategic. For all his talk about service and faith, he is unwilling or too cowardly to face the people he represents. When you can rely on at least 37% to support you no matter what, you don’t have to answer hard questions. You don’t have to engage with people who challenge you. You don’t have to reckon with the data. Tom Barrett’s silence is a choice and he’s a bad representative because of it.

But this is how the system maintains itself: through the combination of misinformation infrastructure, moral inversion, and the strategic silence of those in power. How many times has your Republican representative said that they have not seen the President’s statement on the controversial issue of the day?

I’m sorry, aren’t we reading the same news? Are we not living on the same planet? Don’t you have access to even better information than I do?

These kinds of representatives are and continue to be steaming piles of Triceratops dung.

why this matters

The 37% didn’t wake up one morning and decide to support ICE raids. They have been living in an information environment designed to isolate them from others. They were fed a steady diet of fear and outrage. They were told that their economic anxiety, loss of status, and “cultural displacement” are the fault of immigrants, of “woke” activists, of people different from them.

They were told that the solution is to make America “strong” again, which means cages and deportations and ICE raids. I struggle to find a more un-American and un-Christian response than harming vulnerable people.

But they’re not stupid. And I don’t believe they’re bad. They’re people like my family. Folks who work hard, who care about their kids, who want a country that works for them. The tragedy is that they’ve been told a story that won’t solve their problems. The joke is that we’ve been divided against each other by people whose only interest is in maintaining their own power and wealth.

But what happens when we tear ourselves apart fighting each other? Who wins? The wealthy and powerful will for a time. They always do. But ultimately, we will all lose.

The increased ICE budget doesn’t solve working-class economic anxiety. It doesn’t bring back manufacturing jobs or make healthcare affordable or rebuild the social safety net. It just gives money to a federal agency to terrorize vulnerable people. It provides a warm blanket of funding to justify violence, to advocate collective punishment, to dehumanize entire populations, and to execute those who disagree.

This is engineered. This is a means to an end. Each new distraction, each new outrage, each new budget increase is designed to keep us divided, distracted, and isolated from each other.

But most importantly, this administration want us to stop believing that we can make different choices.

Homeboy called for cancelling the 2026 midterms for fuck’s sake. He sent his sycophantic National Intelligence director to Georgia to seize ballots and to be photographed in some staged frame to look ominous.

This photo would be frightening if it wasn’t so fucking stupid.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/30/tulsi-gabbard-fulton-county-fbi-raid/

Tulsi, sorry, but this doesn’t play; I’m not scared of you. And you forgot your clown makeup. Please go back to posting photos of you doing yoga or whatever.

And icing on the cake: Our current president has called for a former president to be arrested. This is the stuff of fiction, which appears to be the only touchstone for these morons.

what now?

Here’s the thing: engineered systems can be broken. They only work if we stay isolated, distracted, and divided. They only work if we accept the lies. They only work if we stop talking to each other.

We have to see clearly what’s happening. We have to name it. We have to look at Renée Good and Alex Pretti and say their names. We have to look at an ICE budget that rivals a military and ask why. We have to look at Tom Barrett’s silence and understand what it means.

We can make different choices. But we can’t make them from within the lie. We have to refuse it first.