Trump's opponents are overlooking the worst part of Trump’s megabill — here’s why

After President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" narrowly passed, 215-214, among partisan lines in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats wasted no time offering reasons why they hope it fails in the U.S. Senate.

Democrats are especially critical of the bill's draconian cutbacks to Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program) benefits, arguing that if it passes in the Senate, the U.S. can expect a dramatic increase in Americans lacking health insurance and being food-insecure.

But The New Republic's Felipe De La Hoz, in an article published on June 17, argues that one of the worst parts of the bill isn't getting a lot of attention from its opponents.

READ MORE: Corporations learn the hard way that capitulating to Trump is bad for business

"The Democrats have been largely silent on perhaps the bill's most ominous characteristic: an orgy of resources for Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller’s shock troops to carry out President Trump’s indiscriminate crackdown on immigration and protest," De La Hoz warns. "My sense is that Democrats are used to their Republican counterparts, and some within their own ranks, pushing for increased 'border security' and immigration enforcement funding during budget negotiations and think the public will view it as old hat. This is a sort of learned defeatism, but it also ignores that we are talking about an entirely different scale here."

De La Hoz continues, "The bill is effectively a blank check, funding pretty much every aspect of the (Trump) Administration’s ramp-up of enforcement, detention, and surveillance: hiring nearly 20,000 additional immigration agents across Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, constructing more border walls, building detention facilities for tens of thousands of additional people, and so on."

The U.S. Senate is debating the bill at a time when Downtown Los Angeles is being rocked by tense protests in response to immigration raids in that city.

According to De La Hoz, Trump's megabill "furthers the transformation of federal law enforcement toward a focus on immigration enforcement specifically."

READ MORE: Left holding the bag': The price you pay for healthcare could surge next year — here's why

"The Cato Institute estimates that immigration and border funding would equal about eight times the FBI’s entire budget and 36 times more than tax and financial crimes enforcement," De La Hoz explains. "That funding disparity is compounded by Trump's penchant for pulling agents from other functions to the all-encompassing immigration dragnet: For months now, thousands of federal agents who work on everything from child abuse to money laundering have been reassigned to raiding businesses in search of undocumented workers. Meanwhile, ICE is spending so wildly on its crackdown that it may run out of money next month — unless Republicans manage to pass this bill."

READ MORE: 'It shocks the conscience': Senate Republicans dump gas on 'five-alarm fire'

Felipe De La Hoz's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.