𝗞𝗥𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗜 𝗡𝗢𝗘𝗠 𝗜𝗥𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗣𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗬 𝗕𝗟𝗢𝗪𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗚𝗛 𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗕𝗨𝗗𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗔𝗦 𝗦𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗔𝗚𝗘𝗦 𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗦𝗘𝗖𝗨𝗥𝗜𝗧𝗬, 𝗜𝗖𝗘

                                                                                                

Homeland Security Chair Kristi Noem

Once again, the machinery grinds on; vast, blind, and unrepentant. A report, stretching across 168 weary pages, has emerged from the recesses of the House Appropriations Committee, an indictment not of a single man, not of a momentary lapse, but of an entrenched system spiraling under the weight of its own contradictions. The object of scrutiny: the Department of Homeland Security, whose very name now feels like a cruel jest to those still able to think in terms of truth.

They write in cool, bureaucratic prose, measured, sanitized, that ICE, part of Homeland Security, the enforcement arm that roams the land in search of immigration violators, has “spent more than it received.” But beneath these words lies a tale of deeper rot. This is not a ledger error or misfiled document. It is a symptom of a state apparatus that has forgotten restraint, a beast that feeds even when the granaries are empty.

Since the dawn of fiscal year 2025, as leaves turned in October and the new ledger opened, ICE, the bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, began spending beyond its allotted portion. Not a month had passed before its consumption outpaced provision, a foreshadowing of more ominous days. This recklessness, the committee calls “especially egregious,” though even such a phrase feels pallid next to the reality: a branch of government assuming the right to devour what it pleases, leaving others to starve.

The report cautions against a doctrine now creeping into the foundations of DHS, that one mission must cannibalize another, that some arms of the department must suffer, wither, or grow silent so ICE may carry out its relentless pursuit of deportation. This, they warn, “presupposes that other missions... are less important.” But how many times in history have we seen this logic prevail? One function elevated to divine purpose while others; rescue, aid, safety, freedom fade into obscurity?

The subcommittee chair, Mark Amodei, a man presumably seasoned in the rituals of governance, told ICE’s director that the agency now skirts the boundaries of the Antideficiency Act, a forgotten statute meant to prevent just this kind of creeping lawlessness. But in his voice, as reported, one hears not wrath but weary caution. “I don’t know that I have the information I need,” he says, an admission as chilling as any verdict. The watchman no longer sees the road ahead.

The mismanagement does not end with ICE. The report, like a doctor charting a terminal patient’s descent, lists afflictions that span the entire body: the TSA, FEMA, cybersecurity, the Coast Guard. Each one a vital organ, each now neglected as the heart of the operation, The Border, beats louder and more erratically.

Yet no budget has been approved. No consensus has been forged. The clock ticks toward the next fiscal year, but the hands tremble. Negotiations, they say, have not even begun. Meanwhile, the White House waits, not with patience, but with insistence, pressing Congress to pass the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill," a title worthy of a vaudeville act, not a democratic republic. This bill would funnel $168 billion into the vaults of immigration enforcement, nearly five times the current amount. It is as if they have mistaken excess for vision, bloat for strength.

The numbers, dry and cold, tell a story no less brutal than that of a camp’s ration book. ICE’s budget has grown from $8.4 billion in 2023 to $9.6 billion in 2024, and is poised to swell again, to over $11 billion. What has this money bought? A more humane system? A more just process? Or merely more vans in the night, more doors broken down at dawn?

And amid all this, voices rise to defend what is plainly indefensible. The former governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, the person financially mismanaging Homeland Security, now brands an entire city, Los Angeles, as a “city of criminals,” reducing millions of lives to a single slur, the ancient rhetoric of scapegoats and shame revived in the heart of a republic.

Past visionaries have warned us that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. In this report, that line runs also through every line item, every unchecked expense, every silence from a legislator too tired or too fearful to speak.

This is not simply a question of balance sheets or procedural violations. It is a question of what kind of state we are becoming. A state that believes security can be purchased at the cost of dignity. A state that forgets its own laws in pursuit of enforcement. A state that, like the apparatchiks of old, prays not to a god of truth, but to a god of power.

And as always, it is the people, quiet, watchful, hopeful, who must pay the price.

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