Mass Deportations or Mass Detentions?

Hello it’s weekends. It’s the weekend ☕️

The GOP passed the whole campaign in 2024 promising “mass deportations”. Now in power, the Trump administration has led its biggest abuse demonstrations to this slogan. The extraterrestrial enemies act the moves to Cecot? Look how far they will go to get people from the country as quickly as possible. Do you challenge the courts to send people to South Sudan? Wow, they really have to want to expel people.

But an overview of what is necessary to withdraw people in mass – and where the money really goes for this effort – suggests that we are wrong to call these “mass deportations”.

The abolition of someone from the country requires different levels of process. Even under the accelerated abolition, during which immigration officials can expel someone without a complete audience before an immigration judge, people are always sent to another country – either the state that has issued its passport, or a third -party country willing to accept them – which, in turn, creates additional problems which are not necessarily under the control of the Trump administration. The receiver country must issue travel documents allowing the person to go there, and the US government needs the authorization of foreign governments before sending an expulsion flight. The Trump administration spoke strongly and wore a big stick, but that will only lead you so far. For those who are not subject to an accelerated referral, hearings before the immigration court could present deportations over the years.

What the government can do, however, is to hold people while waiting for withdrawal. The budget bill that Congress adopted this week gives the White House what it needs for this program: it includes a huge $ 45 billion for immigration detention. A source from the Senate tells me that a separate $ 46.5 billion, dedicated to the Trump wall, has been written to allow money to be fungible for new detention operations.

The money will be available until September 2029, depending on the bill. The bill also contains an increase in the ice budget – up to $ 29.85 billion – so that the hiring of the personnel to hold people and make moves. This is an almost too large increase to conceptualize, with all the questions you can expect that we are continuing: who will get the contracts to hold? What will these installations look like? How many people will be detained?

But the allowances are enough to know that what we are looking at here is not quite mass deportations. It is mass detention.

– Josh Kovensky

Here is what other TPM has to pressure this weekend:

• A glance at two Miami worldly people who direct a construction company and health programs, including a “Med Spa” in the city, and who also played a role in the aid to the Governor of Florida, Ron Desantis
• At least a rural hospital in Nebraska has already closed in anticipation of the big and beautiful Cups of Trump Medicaid. We take a closer look at the ground impacts of the bill.

Meet the Miami worldly people who helped build “Alligator Alcatraz”

On Tuesday, President Trump visited Florida where he visited a swamp detention center for immigrants that he and other officials have nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” due to the difficult conditions in the surroundings. The installation, which will hold immigrants in tents filled with closed bunk beds, is an original idea of ​​the Trump administration and the former president’s campaign rival, the governor of Florida Ron Desantis (R). It was also built with the help of entrepreneurs, including a pair of married companies from Miami, Carlos Duart and Tina Vidal-Duart.

The detention center is part of Desantis’ efforts to support Trump’s mass expulsion program in its state. This helped the couple smooth their rivalry that emerged during the republican presidential primary last year. Trump and his collaborators have joyfully applauded the original idea of ​​migrants with alligators and gathered from their sleigh on those who protest against the brutal conditions of the establishment. Environmental and tribal groups have also expressed their concerns concerning construction in the Everglades.

In the middle of the tumult, Desantis managed to quickly move the construction by invoking its emergency powers and by issuing contracts without BID to build and manage the installation. And on this list of entrepreneurs, the Miami Herald noted that the Duarts firm “stands out” due to the close association of couples with the governor.

The couple is the general directors of CDR Maguire and its affiliate CDR Health, who have a variety of services, including construction and health programs for refugees. According to the Herald, the Duarts “gave a total of $ 1.9 million to the two political action committees of the State supporting Desantis offers for the Governor and the Republican Party of Florida”.

In 2021, Carlos Duart was appointed Desantis to become a director of the Florida International University. The wife of Carlos, Tina Vidal-Duart, is on the board of directors of a charity led by the wife of Desantis, Casey, who, according to Herald, “is at the heart of a criminal investigation by the State Prosecutor’s Office in the county of Leon on a transfer of 10 million dollars from a Medicaid regulations”.

But politics is only part of the high profile of the duarts. The couple are regulars of red carpets in Miami and, in 2023, participated in a photo shoot and a profile for a magazine telling the social scene of the region. This play nicknamed them a “dynamic duo” for their shared commercial success and their “philanthropy”. He also revealed that the Carlos driver of Ferra-Ferra “can make mathematics in her head very quickly” and that Tina’s life was “changed” by the successful self-assistance book “The Secret”.

On social networks, Tina seems to maintain several Instagram accounts. One, who boasts of his role as “#Wife”, “#Mom” and “#Doglove” is locked. Her “public” page, which identifies it with a royal title, “Lady Tina Vidal-Duart”, strongly announces a “Med Spa” which she has in Tallahassee which offers products and treatments such as Botox and charges.

Although the duarts are not foreign to the headlines and hashtags, they seem to adopt a more discreet approach to their work on “Alligator Alcatraz”. TPM contacted Carlos and Tina to ask questions about their role in the project. Tina did not respond and Carlos sent a laconic text.

“I have no comments. We are also under ndas,” he wrote.

We followed to ask if he was convinced that the conditions of the detention camp were “human”. Duart did not respond.

– Hunter Walker

Trump Megabill’s Medicaid reduction has passed. Declares the attack on the devastating impacts

The ink had barely dried on the package of unpopular reconciliation of the republican adopted by a margin to vote in the Senate before its real implications touched.

A Nebraska health system called Community Hospital has announced the closure of a local medical center in Curtis, Nebraska, the local ABC affiliate, reported on Thursday morning, just a few hours before the House Republicans adopted the Senate bill. The CEO of the hospital, Troy Bruntz, told the publication that the “federal budget cuts provided for in Medicaid” have made “impossible” that the establishment remains open.

This is exactly what experts and medical defenders have warned elected officials.

Curtis is a small town with a population of around 800 inhabitants, according to the most recent census. More than 23% of its population live below the poverty line, compared to 10.5% of Nebraskans in general, according to census figures. About 39,000 people in Nebraska should lose coverage of health care as part of the “big and beautiful bill”, according to data from the organization of the KFF health policy.

Curtis voters, located in the county of Frontier, massively argued President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections, according to official elections. And the State Governor of the State, Jim Pillen, praised the adoption of the bill, despite his negative impacts provided and now which take place on his state.

Meanwhile, states legislatures are already taking measures to mitigate federal spending reductions and posters, including money storage, funds and reduction in expenses in their own budgets. I explain how some states are preparing more for the impact here.

– Layla A. Jones