Tom McClintock: An Out of Touch Immigration Hardliner

Much of the attention on the recent Budget Reconciliation Bill (the so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill’) thus far has been on the huge cuts ($1 trillion) to health care and social programs such as Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, Veteran’s programs, SNAP benefits, etc.

However, the bill also includes some massive INCREASES in funding for immigration enforcement programs run by agencies such as Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Defense (DOD), that will profoundly change the way our government deals with the immigrant population.

In total, the bill adds $170.7 billion in additional funding for immigration and border enforcement-related activities to these agencies’ budgets, including such things as:

• $45 billion for federal detention capacity expansion, which represents a staggering 308% increase on an annual basis over ICE’s FY 2024 detention budget. (By comparison, the entire Federal Bureau of Prison’s budget was $8.6 billion in FY 2025.)  This allocation would allow ICE to add an additional 116,000 detention beds.
• $3.5 billion for state and local entities to construct their own facilities and lease them back to ICE (such as Florida is now doing with the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility)
• $9 billion for additional ICE agents, allowing for the hiring of up to 10k new ICE officers.
• $1 billion for DOD support (militarization) for ICE operations
• $450 million for Operation Stonegarden’ (funding to state and local law enforcement agencies to support border enforcement)

ICE, and its masked agents, is now the equivalent of the 15^th largest military in the world.

Congressman Tom McClintock, who has built his political identity around cracking down on illegal immigration, was an enthusiastic supporter of the BBB and the massive increase in immigration enforcement capacity that will be facilitated by this bill.

Rather than champion much needed, reasonable and humane reform of our very broken immigration system, which a whopping 78% of Americans support, McClintock has become a vocal champion of the Administration’s policy of indiscriminate “mass deportation,” which has resulted in an unprecedented human rights catastrophe marked by

• Violent raids by unidentified, masked “officers” at worksites, schools, churches and immigration courts;
• Arrest and detention of people merely suspected of being in the country illegally (often on the basis of illegal racial profiling), without warrants or constitutionally required due process;
• Illegal rendition of people to offshore detention sites such as the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or the Republic of Sudan;
• Domestic detention of innocent people, including legal residents, asylum seekers and even US citizens, in substandard conditions that don’t meet basic legal requirements for humane treatment;
• Arbitrary revocation of Temporary Protected Status for persons who face grave security threats in their home countries such as Afghanistan, Venezuela and Haiti;
• Separation of parents from their US born children, leaving children to fend for themselves while their immigrant parents get imprisoned or deported.

These tactics are not only cruel and inhumane, but also counterproductive, harming scores of innocent people while not solving any of the underlying problems that plague our current dysfunctional immigration system.

And now Tom McClintock wants to codify them into law. In recent comments to Punchbowl News, McClintock emphasized his support for legislation that would lock in Donald Trump’s border policies.  His stance is part of a broader push by House Republicans to reintroduce their hardline immigration bill, H.R. 2, which includes:

• Severe restrictions on asylum
• Limited authority for humanitarian parole
• Tougher criminal penalties for undocumented immigrants

McClintock is also developing legislation targeting so-called “sanctuary cities,” which would limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. His goal: to stop local and state governments from shielding undocumented immigrants from deportation.

McClintock’s position aligns closely with Donald Trump’s and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. He’s not interested in compromise measures like the bipartisan “Dignity Act,” which would allow longtime undocumented immigrants a path to legal status. Instead, he’s focused on border walls, enforcement, and punishing cities that seek more humane immigration approaches.  Even though more Americans than ever want to see Congress enact legislation that finally spells out a sensible and equitable pathway to citizenship.

Immigrants are not just numbers, or deportation quotas to be met – they are human beings, and many of these human beings being detained or deported by the Trump administration are in the US 100% legally.  They have Green Cards or other forms of protected residency status, are legally seeking political asylum, are married to or parents of US citizens, and in some cases are fully naturalized US citizens themselves.  They contribute to our economy by doing many jobs that would otherwise go begging, such as picking our fruits and vegetables, serving our food, butchering our meat, landscaping our yards, cleaning our homes, caring for our children and elderly, constructing our houses, and paving our roads – but also by working as engineers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers and law enforcement, as well as protecting our country through service in the armed forces. And they pay taxes.

They deserve better. And WE deserve a better Representative who can work in a bipartisan manner to make reasonable and necessary public immigration policy while respecting human rights, the rule of law and basic decency, not one who likes to score cheap political points with his MAGA base by further inflaming an already volatile public policy issue.

There IS a better way, and in future blog posts we will delve deeper, outlining what that better way might look like.