Also: Greenville County Sheriff signs cooperation agreement with ICE

By Laura Haight
President, DWGC

The recently passed budget bill will have a big impact on our communities – most of that bad. But you can’t convince me that President Trump doesn’t know his “big, beautiful bill” is one “big, ugly, slap in the face” to working people.

Unfortunately, most people will not actually feel that pain until after the midterms.

– An estimated 16 million people will lose access to Medicaid by 2034. Some because they are unable to meet the work requirement – 80 hours per month. The work requirement could kick in in December 2026 – one month after the election. Other cuts are scheduled to take effect in 2028. The South Carolina Hospital Association estimates that when they are fully in place, the cuts will result in SC hospitals losing $2.4 billion annually. Estimates on individuals who will lose their Medicaid benefits vary from 100,000 to 215,000 SC residents.

– Funding for SNAP will shift in large part to the states – a double whammy for people who depend on SNAP benefits to feed their families. A work requirement that says SNAP beneficiaries must work until they are 54 will be extended by 10 years – to 64. We don’t know when they will take effect. 

– No tax on tips. This is pretty interesting since i haven’t heard much of the actual details on this. So I did a little digging. Turns out the no tax deal is only on cash tips. The Treasury Department has yet to produce a list of what tips and occupations qualify for this deduction. However, it is a temporary fix and expires at the end of 2028.

– If climate’s your issue, you feel the pain immediately. The $7500 tax credit for electric vehicles ends on September 30. Apparently, the Republican calculus is that you’ll forget that by 2026. Although another cut – a $3200 tax credit for homeowners who add solar panels, fuel cells, or battery storage tech to their homes – will end in 2026.

Let’s talk about where the government will put money. I think we’ve heard plenty about billionaires, so i’m focusing on ICE.

With the $175 billion INCREASE in its budget, ICE becomes the largest law enforcement agency in the country – dwarfing the FBI – and giving it the 2nd largest budget among the world’s military, behind only the US and China. ICE will have $30 billion more than the Russian military. According to the American Immigration Council, the funding for new immigration detention centers (like Alligator Alcatraz) is 62 percent larger than the entire federal prison system budget. They are planning enough capacity for 116,000 detainees each day.

It is fitting that they should be compared to the military here and abroad. Just one month after celebrating the 250th birthday of the US Army, we are now witnessing the birth of a private military force. One operating outside the law, one unburdened by the complexities of the Constitution, one answering not to Congress, not to the judiciary, but only to the executive. 

We see these tactics daily – to the point where they may soon stop getting any air time – illegally profiling residents just going about their business, detaining innocent individuals without any due process, US attorneys literally lying to federal judges or refusing to answer questions. And throughout the country, fear and disruption at what is now clearly moving in the direction of military-style occupations of US cities. 

You don’t need a particularly creative imagination to figure out what comes next. 

What you might not know is that even here in Greenville, we are in league with ICE already. According to the ACLU, Greenville County Sheriff’s office signed a cooperation agreement with ICE in March. This means they will get training and be authorized to execute federal administrative immigration warrants on those who may already be in custody. This is traditionally the job of the federal government and it’s important to note that an administrative warrant is not the same as a judicial warrant. No evidence has been presented to a court, there has been no external review (such as by a judge or a grand jury) and no probable cause is required. But Greenville officers will serve the warrants and hold the individuals for ICE. 

Nineteen law enforcement agencies in SC have signed these agreements and I’m embarrassed that we are one of them. I also wonder why this has never come up for discussion at a county council meeting. It seems to me that something that has the potential to impact innocent people and to expand to more serious level of support for ICE, which could include tracking down, incarcerating and holding individuals for ICE, should be discussed at a higher level of governance and responsibility. 

The ACLU calls these agreements “a disaster for civil liberties, a fiscal burden on local governments and a threat to public safety.”

I want to encourage everyone to contact their county council member to find out what they know and when they knew it. And if they don’t know it, why not. Let’s demand that they find out who made this decision, why the county council was not notified (if that’s the case). It is immaterial to me that maybe we aren’t being asked to do very much. That’s NOW. We have made a commitment in writing, signed by the county sheriff in a binding legal document that among other things commits them to “pursue to completion all criminal charges that caused the alien to be taken into custody.”

The agreement allows ICE to select and train sheriff’s staff, to have “continuous access” to their personnel records and, potentially, to deploy them outside the county as the agency and the federal government see fit. 

I’ve quoted all that directly from the signed agreement.

This is some of the trickle down impact of federal policies that the government would hope you don’t know about. And there is so much more. Knowledge is power. Do we want ICE on our streets? Do we want our law enforcement officers helping ICE serve potentially unsupported warrants on people being denied due process? I believe the answer is a resounding NO, and not only from Democrats.