Art: Nikki Friede
"The question is who happens next? Who shows up? Who organizes? Who refuses cynicism? Who protects vulnerable communities? Who turns rage into disciplined action? Who remembers democracy is participatory, ...? -Michael Jochum
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Independent analysts calculate the July 2025 appropriation sustains 135,000 beds through fiscal 2029, triple what Trump inherited and rivaling the federal criminal prison estate, an institution a century built.
“Homegrowns are next. The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places.”
— Donald Trump to El Salvador’s president, in the Oval Office, on imprisoning American citizens
The political prisons Trump requested now operate, funded past the next election, expanding by purchase order.
The Republican Congress built this system in eighteen months, waived the guards’ background checks, and labeled the first dead protesters terrorists. ICE itself
claims funding for 80,000 new beds atop facilities confining 70,000, which points toward 150,000 by ICE’s own arithmetic. Seven in ten people inside lack any criminal conviction.
