Following the signing of President Donald Trump's megabill, his administration will soon have a sprawling police state run by political appointees to use at his disposal.
That's according to a Tuesday analysis in The Bulwark by Jonathan V. Last, who broke down the numbers in the massive Republican budget legislation that became law last week. Last compared the staffing levels and culture of the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and expressed alarm that the latter would soon surpass the former in terms of being the preeminent federal law enforcement agency.
"This is a big deal," Last wrote. "Because the FBI is a professionalized organization with strict standards and a well-defined mission while ICE is more or less a national brute squad."
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Last went on to explain that FBI agents are required to be highly educated, and often have postgraduate degrees in addition to undergoing a rigorous 20-week training program at Quantico before they get their badges. He contrasted the discipline of the FBI with ICE, who he said is mostly "made up of cops, military veterans and whoever can be rounded up at the local bus station."
He also pointed out that while the FBI's director operates independently of the Department of Justice's chain of command — and serves a 10-year term meant to provide continuity and surpass multiple presidential administrations — ICE is "headed by a political appointee who answers directly to another political appointee." The Bulwark editor additionally observed that under the new Republican budget, ICE will have a budget more than $3 billion larger than the FBI's by next year, and plans to add 10,000 new agents over the next three years.
"Within months, ICE will have twice as many agents as the FBI and will have its own huge and growing prison system (which it operates independently) as its masked and un-uniformed officers continue to snatch people off of the streets and mete out violence as they see fit," he wrote. "These are competing law enforcement organizations. One of them is relatively committed to liberalism and the rule of law. The other is less scrupulous and more malleable."
"And that’s the one which will be dominant in America just a few months from now," he added. "What do you think is going to happen?"
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Click here to read Last's full analysis in The Bulwark (subscription required).