In May, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called out Noem’s expenditure of $200 million on an ad campaign pushing Trump’s agenda and $21 million to transport about 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay only to have many of them transferred back out. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Noem: “You are spending like you don’t have a budget…. You're on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act. That means you are going to spend more money than you have been allocated by Congress. This is a rare occurrence, and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July, over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has provided enough money to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], but the Constitution and the federal law does not allow you to spend more money than you've been given, or to invent money. And this obsession with spending at the border…has left the country unprotected elsewhere.
Noem responded to Blumenthal that she was fulfilling a mandate. She told him: “The American people overwhelmingly in the last election said, ‘We want a secure border, we want to make sure no longer are the scales of justice tipped in the favor of criminals….’” A recent video posted to Facebook Reels by the Department of Homeland Security makes it clear Noem’s justification was cover for a violent Christian nationalist vision in which ICE and the Border Patrol are enforcing God’s commandments. A dark film invokes Isaiah 6:8, the Bible verse in which God asks, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah answers, “Here am I! Send me.” The exchange is widely interpreted to show volunteers willing to do God’s work.
A poll released Friday makes it clear that the American people do not support such a vision and did not, in fact, expect a Trump administration to deport undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record and have lived in the U.S. for years. A Gallup poll released yesterday shows that the administration’s draconian policies toward immigrants have created a backlash. A record 79% of adults say immigration is good for the country, with only 17% seeing it as bad. That change has been driven primarily by a shift in Republicans, 64% of whom now agree that immigrants are good for the country, up from their low of under 40%. The percentage of American adults who say immigration should be reduced has dropped to 30%, down from 55% in 2024.
Those numbers are unlikely to improve for the administration in light of yesterday’s ICE raids at two licensed cannabis farms in Southern California. Agents used less-lethal ammunition and tear gas in the raids. A number of people were injured, one critically. Agents arrested 200 people, including George Retes, a 25-year-old disabled veteran and U.S. citizen who worked at one of the farms as a security guard. Agents claimed Retes was a protester. His family has been unable to locate him, telling Josh Haskell of the local ABC affiliate that the local sheriff’s office and local police departments all said they do not know where he is.
More information coming about about the conditions of immigrant detention are also unlikely to increase support for the administration's policies. Today, at least five members of Congress and about 20 state legislators toured the new ICE detention center in the Everglades. The tour was planned rather than unexpected, enabling staff to prepare for it. Nonetheless, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said: “These detainees are living in cages. The pictures you've seen don't do it justice. They are essentially packed into cages. Wall to wall humans. Thirty-two detainees per cage…. There are three tiny toilets that…have a sink attached to it, so…they get their drinking water and they brush their teeth where they poop, in the same unit." Nine hundred men are currently in the facility.