Science is Cool... But Have You Tried Deporting People?

A nation’s budget is a fascinating document. It’s less a dry accounting ledger and more a national diary, revealing our deepest, darkest priorities. And if the latest entry is anything to go by, our collective diary entry reads something like:

You might have missed it between the “released” Epstein files and the firing of nearly every late night comic in the name of “free speech”, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) just hit the jackpot. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” signed into law this past summer, is pumping over $170 billion over four years into border and interior enforcement. This legislative steroid shot will nearly triple ICE’s annual budget to an estimated $28 billion.

Let that sink in. We’re giving an agency a budget larger than the entire GDP of Iceland to hire 10,000 new agents, expand its network of (often for-profit) cages to 100,000 beds, and build a deportation machine with the ambitious KPI of removing one million immigrants a year.

So, what are we giving up for this glorious expansion of state-sponsored misery? Well, mostly just the stuff that cures diseases, builds the future, and, you know, makes life worth living.

What Science Gets You

Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane to see what federally-funded science has done for us lately, besides being a line item for the chopping block.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) - Budget: $47.3B (with a proposed cut to $27.9B)

For every $1 we invest in the NIH, studies show it generates about $2.60 in economic output. But who needs a positive return on investment when you can have… well, the alternative? Without the NIH, we’d be living in a world without:

• The Human Genome Project: You know, the complete map of our own DNA that revolutionized medicine.
• MRI Technology: That loud tube that can see inside your body without filleting you like a fish.
• Cancer Immunotherapies: Training your own immune cells to kill cancer. Pretty neat.
• Modern Vaccines: The reason you don’t have to worry about polio or measles.

National Science Foundation (NSF) - Budget: $9.06B (with a proposed cut to $3.9B)

The NSF is the scrappy underdog that funds the weird, fundamental ideas that turn into world-changing tech. For a fraction of ICE’s budget, it gave us:

• The Internet: That thing you’re using to read this. It started as an NSF project called ARPANET.
• Google: The search algorithm was developed with NSF funding at Stanford.
• Barcodes: The reason checkout lines move faster than a glacier.
• Doppler Radar: How you know to bring an umbrella.

Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science - Budget: $8.24B (with a proposed cut to $7.1B)

The DOE doesn’t just look after nukes; it funds the basic research that powers our world. Thanks, DOE, for:

• GPS Technology: So your phone knows you’re at a Taco Bell and not in the middle of the ocean.
• LED Lighting: The cheap, efficient lights that are slowly taking over the world.
• 3D Printing: The ability to print a house, or a car (or at least a tiny plastic boat).

What Deporting People Gets You

So, what kind of fantastic return on investment do we get for our shiny new $28 billion ICE budget? Instead of curing cancer or inventing the next internet, we’re buying:

• A Massive Surveillance Dragnet: ICE is spending billions on tech to create a “digital cage,” using facial recognition, location tracking from utility bills, and data brokers to monitor huge swaths of the population without warrants.
• For-Profit Prisons: A significant chunk of the budget goes directly to private prison corporations like CoreCivic and GEO Group, whose business model literally depends on keeping detention beds full. Their track record on human rights is, shall we say, not great.
• “Smart” Phones for Tracking: The agency is expanding its “Alternatives to Detention” program, which often involves forcing asylum seekers to wear ankle monitors or use a smartphone app that tracks their location 24/7.
• An Economic Nosedive: While the NIH provides a 2.6x return, mass deportation does the opposite. Economists estimate that removing the targeted number of undocumented workers would instantly vaporize hundreds of billions of dollars from our GDP annually. We’re literally paying billions to make our economy smaller. It’s like taking out a high-interest loan just so you can set a pile of your own cash on fire.

So there you have it. We could have a future filled with medical marvels, technological wonders, and a deeper understanding of the universe. Instead, we’re choosing to spend our money on a system that profits from human misery and actively shrinks our economy.

It’s a bold strategy. Let’s see if it pays off.