Medicaid Cuts, Expanded ICE, and the Deportation of pro-Palestinian Protesters are All Connected
Disability rights organizations are protesting the largest cuts to Medicaid in history.
On Thursday, the House voted to pass Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill," cutting more than $1 trillion from Medicaid over a decade and causing 17 million people to lose access to life-saving health insurance by 2034. The legislation also cuts SNAP (food assistance) benefits and increases Medicare costs for low-income beneficiaries.
Disability rights organizations have called out this bill for its devastating impact on low-income and disabled Americans who rely on Medicaid for access to home- and community-based services. But few orgs have mentioned an important fact:
Cutting Medicaid is directly tied to Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-free speech, and pro-genocide agenda.
It’s not just Medicaid cuts- this bill also makes ICE the federal government’s most heavily funded law enforcement agency.
This bill dedicates $170 billion for immigration and border-related operations, with $40 billion for ICE over four years.
- $8 billion to hire 10,000 more ICE agents
- $858 million for signing and retention bonuses
- $45 billion for detention facilities
- $2 billion in bonuses for Customs and Border Protection
ICE will have a budget for more officers than the FBI, and more funding for detention centers than the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
ICE inflicts ableist violence upon detainees by routinely denying medical care to the people they disappear and incarcerate.
This legislation has drastically increased the surveillance state and imperiled the lives of millions of people.
Medicaid, ICE, and Palestine are Linked
Over the past several months, we have seen this administration use ICE to kidnap and attempt to deport Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk.
Zionist groups understand that these deportation policies are a weapon that can be used to silence Palestinian voices calling out the genocide, and have bragged about sharing the names of pro-Palestinian protesters with the Trump administration for that very reason.
The Department of Justice is now “aggressively prioritizing” efforts to denaturalize citizens. Trump has talked about arresting NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani, and Republican Representative Andy Ogles has called for Mamdani to be denaturalized.
We cannot ignore how Medicaid is being cut in tandem with bolstering ICE and harming immigrants from the Global South, as well as immigrants and citizens who are critical of Israel.
Medicaid Cuts and ICE Funding are Part of a White Supremacist Agenda
Taking away health coverage or access to stable food is all an effort to further push people into poverty and desperation.
We know social support systems are less accessible to Black and brown communities, and cuts will impact their wellbeing and livelihoods most.
People in power will racialize the exacerbated desperation as being people being “crazy/disabled/dangerous” and needing deportation, institutionalization, or incarceration.
They will use disability stigma as a tool for incarceration.
Meanwhile, ICE continues to abduct people from their homes, places of work, and communities.
They have detained more than 97,000 people in five months.
Families of detainees have reported that their loved ones have not been feed or have been fed rotten food. Detainees have been forced to sleep on the floor for weeks. They are routinely denied access to medication or treatment for illnesses they contract in detention.
ICE has also sent hundreds of men to CECOT in El Salvador without due process, where they have been subjected to beatings, forced to kneel for 9 hours, and denied access to the bathroom in overcrowded conditions.
The cruelty is the point. Disablement and debilitation is government policy. It separates the have and have nots, healthy and unhealthy, the sane and insane, the white and Black and brown.
There is no disability justice without abolishing ICE.
There is no disability justice without a Free Palestine.